Why Is EPFO Hiring Law Firms?

The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) is looking to empanel law companies to provide legal opinion and associated services as defined in scope of the work of EPFO.

The proposal to elicit response from the interested law firms was issued last month and the process is slated to commence by November 14.

The statutory body -- under the ministry of labour and employment -- has issued a request for proposal (RFP) to empanel one or more law firms to provide legal opinion on matters related to interpretation of various statutes, such as the Employees' Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, among other things.

The firms will also represent EPFO in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), property related cases, commercial agreements, administrative matters, financial matters, service matters, and taxation matters.

The law firms will also draft commercial agreements, memorandum of understandings, notices, including vetting/drafting various types of legal documents like deeds of conveyance and contracts.

The approved law firms will be empanelled with the EPFO headquarters in New Delhi for an initial period of one year, which can be extended to three years.

The current empanelment would be in addition to the existing panel of advocates.

The move comes in the wake of the EPFO's effort towards automation and to rationalise its workforce, as it looks to migrate more from a forceful compliance regime to voluntary compliance.

Last month, it had issued a RFP to undertake a work study by one of the top 20 National Institutional Ranking Framework-ranked institutes in the category of management to undertake an organisational restructuring through comprehensive rationalisation of its manpower and field offices.

The EPFO is one of the largest social security organisations in the world with 67 million contributory members in 690,000 establishments across India.

In FY21 alone, it processed 45.8 million claims.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com