Mandatory Aadhaar number for new accounts put on hold: EPFO

But asks officers to collect available Aadhaar numbers of EPF members

Retirement fund body EPFO has put on hold its decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for new members from March 1,2013.

"In view of discussions with UIDAI officials, it may not be possible for new members to obtain Aadhaar numbers by March 1, 2013. Therefore it has been decided not to make Aadhaar number mandatory for EPFO members from March 1, 2013", an EPFO order to the field staff said.

Late last month, Employees' Provident Fund Organisation's (EPFO) decision drew flak from trade unions, following which the body has now decided to put it on hold.

However, the field staff has been asked to make efforts to obtain the available Aadhaar numbers of EPF members. The staff has also been asked to collect core banking account numbers of all contributing members.

The EPFO order has observed that getting the Aadhaar is a time consuming process and the scheme covers 18 states only. The remaining states are covered by the Register General of India under the National Population Register, which would be the digital database of the country's residents.

EPFO had envisaged replacing members' account numbers with their Aadhaar numbers to avoid inconvenience to people as they had to apply for transfer of PF money to new accounts while changing jobs.

Now, EPFO is working on creating a central database where all members would have a permanent account number and would not require to transfer PF accounts on changing jobs.

Besides, this will help EPFO members, particularly construction workers, who often change their jobs or contractors.