New Delhi : Even as the Centre has ushered in a new era for provident fund subscribers with the notification of the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Scheme, 2026, an RTI (Right to Information) accessed exclusively by India Today. The EPF Scheme, 2026, which came into effect on June 29 after being notified in the Gazette, replaces the EPF Scheme, 1952. The new framework is aimed at simplifying provident fund rules and making the system more digital for nearly eight crore active EPFO subscribers.
According to the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), as of March 31, 2026, there were 30,91,862 inoperative EPF accounts holding an unclaimed balance of approximately Rs 9,330 crore. The latest RTI data shows only a modest improvement over the previous financial year. While the number of inoperative EPF accounts declined by around 92,000- from 31.83 lakh on March 31, 2025, to 30.91 lakh a year later-the unclaimed amount fell by 851 crore, from 10,181 crore to 9,330 crore.
The magnitude of the unclaimed corpus becomes clearer when viewed against major public spending. The Rs 9,330 crore lying in dormant EPF accounts is almost equal to the Rs 10,169 crore the Centre has spent on the UDAN regional connectivity scheme since its launch in 2016. It is also nearly equivalent to the Union government’s 2026-27 allocation for Ayushman Bharat–Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY).
Adjusted for inflation, that works out to around Rs 2,934 crore in 2026, meaning the unclaimed EPF corpus could fund three IITs, with over Rs 500 crore still left over. The comparison is illustrative and highlights the scale of workers’ retirement savings lying dormant in EPF accounts. To understand whether the number of inoperative accounts has been increasing over the years, India Today sought year-wise details of inoperative EPF accounts and the amount lying in them for the last five financial years.
The RTI application also sought details of inoperative accounts linked with Aadhaar, the amount lying in such accounts, and the status of auto-settlement for these accounts. The EPFO declined to disclose the information, invoking Section 8(1)(e) of the RTI Act, which exempts information available to a public authority in a fiduciary relationship from disclosure.
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