The Employee Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) has now increased the eligibility threshold limit for the Auto Claim settlement under para 68J. The current Auto Claim limit of 50,000/- has nor been increased to 1,00,000. This has also been deployed in the application software with effect from 10th April 2024. A circular regarding this information has been released by EPFO on 16th April 2024.
What is Para 68J?
As per the Para 68J, employees may request an advance from the provident fund for medical treatment in specific circumstances. It includes situation when an employee/ dependent has been hospitalised for a month or longer, undergo a major surgery in a hospital, or have any critical illness like TB, leprosy, paralysis, cancer, or a heart condition.
Why the threshold amount has been increased?
Taking into consideration the increasing medical expenses has resulted in enhancement of the threshold limit. This would enable the employees now to cover the medical expenses in a better way. Being an auto claim the employees can directly apply and no certificates required for applying for the same.
How to apply?
In order to apply for the Auto Claim the employee needs to login to the EPFO member portal using the UAN credentials. The employee needs to satisfy the KYC and service eligibility conditions. The employee then needs to select the relevant claim and further can authenticate using OTP to complete the online claim submission.