

Mint Explainer | EPFO’s E-PRAAPTI portal: What it means for dormant PF accounts
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.With the government planning to roll out E-PRAAPTI, an Aadhaar-linked portal by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), subscribers will soon be able to trace and access dormant or unclaimed provident fund accounts with minimal effort. The platform is designed to let users identify legacy accounts, link them to their Universal Account Number (UAN), update KYC details and reactivate balances through a fully digital process.The shift marks a move from an employer-dependent system to a member-led model, where individuals can manage PF accounts directly using digital authentication.Mint explores how the portal could help unlock dormant provident fund accounts and what the shift to a member-led system means for subscribers.India has a large number of inactive provident fund (PF) accounts, largely due to job changes, incomplete KYC, or accounts created before UAN became universal.Over time, EPFO has acknowledged that a significant portion of its total accounts are inactive or inoperative—many of them small-value balances that workers have lost track of.
With over 280 million EPF accounts in the system, even a small share turning inactive translates into crores of accounts lying unused.The portal will be launched in a phased manner.In the first phase, users will log in using Aadhaar authentication and enter their old member ID to locate accounts. Once identified, they will be able to link the account to their UAN, update personal and bank details, complete KYC requirements, and reactivate the account to access funds.In later phases, the system is expected to expand to enable account retrieval even without legacy details, making it more accessible over time.The potential impact could
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