“In August this year, my pension amount stopped getting credited into my account. When I visited the EPFO, no information was forthcoming. However, there is a notification outside the Chinchwad branch of SBI that they are not able to disburse the pension amount as they had not received the statement from the EPFO,” said Srinivasan.

Data available with the EPFO suggests that over 6,000 people like Srinivasan have not received their pension through the SBI for July, August and September. In Chinchwad itself, over 1,000 are affected.

These are people who are covered under the Employees Pension Scheme 1995 - a provision that allows those working in the private sector to receive pension after retirement. The EPFO has selected five banks for this purpose - United Trust of India (UTI), Bank of India (BOI), HDFC, Punjab National Bank, and the SBI.

Each pensioner has to submit a ‘life certificate’ or a non-remarriage certificate in the case of widows/ widowers to the banks, which the banks forward to us. These certificates are collected in November. We send these instructions to the banks each month. While the other banks have complied with the procedures, SBI is yet to send us the certificates of their pensioners, said Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner, V K Patil.

Despite the certificates not reaching the EPFO, SBI has been crediting money from the EPFO’s account into the pensioners’ account since November 2006, Patil said. This lapse was detected by the EPFO only in July when SBI was asked to stop crediting money on its own accord.

In all, 9,803 pensioners are registered with the EPFO through the SBI. Of these, the EPFO has a record of 3,815 life certificates. Another 946 certificates landed with the EPFO in September after the SBI was intimated about the provisions.

“We realise that for pensioners, this amount is very essential. Most of them need it for their medicines. But for the sake of authenticity, to ensure that the pension amount does not go to the wrong hands, we cannot release the amount without the life certificates,” Patil said.

Assistant General Manager, Anuradha Kurma, SBI main branch at Rasta Peth, said that all arrears would be cleared by October. “We had pointed out to the EPFO that their instructions would affect the pensioners but the EPFO told us to stop the pensions,” she said.

“Our branches were under the impression that the life certificates had to be retained in the branches. Now the branches are in the process of forwarding the life certificates to them,” said Kurma.

The EPFO, however, insisted that instructions about the life certificates are sent to the all the five banks each month.