Retirement fund body EPFO has extended the deadline for submitting digital life certificate by its over 50 lakh pensioners till February 28 to help them get their pension account linked with Aadhaar.

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Earlier in November last year, the EPFO had decided to extend the last date for submission of life certificate till January 15, 2017, in order to provide relief to pensioners as they were facing difficulties in banks due to demonetisation.

"Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has decided to extend the date of submission of digital life certificate through Jeevan Pramaan Patra programme by February 28, 2017," a senior official said.

Elaborating further, the official said, "The decision is taken because Aadhaar is needed for submission of digital life certificate. EPFO has already made it mandatory for pensioners as well as subscribers to submit Aadhaar for continuing the benefit of Employees' Pension Scheme."

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The official also informed, "The EPFO has done away with the system of accepting life certificate manually through banks. The pensioners would have to provide life certificate digitally either through their mobile phone or at common service centres or at bank branches providing the facility."

The EPFO has already joined the vast network of over 2 lakh common services centers (CSC) to widen its reach. The CSC network is one of the largest government approved online service delivery channels in the world.

As per the practice, the EPFO pensioners are required to submit their life certificate by November. In case, the pensioners don't submit their life certificate their pension is stopped.

EPFO has been accepting life certificate through Jeevan Pramaan software application through mobile phones. Besides, the pensioners were using over two lakh common service centres across the country to submit their life certificates.

The EPFO runs three social security schemes -- Employees' Provident Fund 1952, Employees' Pension Scheme 1995 and Employees' Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme 1976 -- to provide provident fund, pension and group term insurance to its over four crore subscribers.

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