Provident Fund – Know your balances – ePassbook Launched

EPFO has provided a facility for all the employees to directly know their current EPF balances. Please visit this link to get your current PF balance information (as per the EPFO records) through an SMS on your mobile.

Note that because of the delay in accounting of monthly contributions as noted above, the balance information you would receive may be as of the last statement period. This excludes the Interest on contributions for 2009-10 and the contributions for 2010-11.

With the e-sewa coming in, this information could become much better in the coming months /years.

Link: http://www.epfindia.com/MembBal.html

Ensure that you read through the FAQ given in the above page, and understand the procedure well.

EPFO e-Sewa

Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) has introduced Electronic Challan-cum-Return (ECR) facility to provide greater transparency and better quality of services.

The ECR facility is available from April, 2012. All Employers who are covered under the Employees’ Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 are required to register their establishments on EPFO website for filing the Electronic Challan cum Return (ECR) for wage month of March 2012 (payable in April 2012) onward.

The ECR facility is intended to provide following benefits:

• No paper return to be prepared and submitted to EPFO
• No need to submit other returns viz., Form 5/10/12A, 3A and 6A
• Employers will get the confirmation of payment through SMS instantly
• The contribution will be credited to the members’ account on monthly basis
• Employers can view the annual accounts statement for accounting year 2011-12 online
• For earlier years employers can request for the annual statement through this portal
• The ECR facility is available for companies who are contributing to the statutory scheme run by EPFO as well as companies who are running in-house PF trusts
• Members can get the detailed account statements with all credit and debit on request through our website with effect from 1^st May 2012 (after launching of Member e-Sewa).

PFO has now brought this dream alive by launching the member services portal at http://members.epfoservices.in/  - though the portal is still in Beta mode (brought down regularly every day for making updates and expected to be a comprehensive live service soon) you can register on it right now, to take a look at your e-passbook which contains all your PF balances and transaction details.

NANDI HILLS-Karnataka

I went for a trip with three of my friends on 15th Aug 2005 to Nandi Hills, located 60 kms north of Bangalore, Karnataka. We started at around 8.00 am on our bikes (Black Pulsars)... There was no traffic on the roads as it was a holiday and morning too...

The best part of the trip was the journey by road…It was NH 7 Hyderabad Road...

Once out of the city limits our bikes touched 90-100 Km/hr... After 45min of journey we reached the foot hills of the Nandi Hill... It was really exciting to ride through the hair pin bends on the way uphill.

There is nothing much after reaching the hill top other than monkeys and Yoga Nandishvara Temple. Climate is the most important thing that we enjoyed there. It was really cold and foggy.. Near the temple there are few small shops, where you can have coffee and snacks but monkeys are a nuisance..

On the way back to Bangalore, we saw a small hill... I along with one of my friend s decided to explore it... We went up the hill , took few snaps and came down and started again ... there were few small dhabas along the high way, we decided to have lunch in one of them... the food is really good in those dhabas… you do get Chilled beer also…after having food and beer we started back to Bangalore…

Thus, the Independence Day Celebrations Came to an End

Noida Serial Murders

The mind perplex at the coldness of Moninder Singh Pandher who can sexually abuse and then kill a child. But then there is the argument of mental sickness or psychotic mind. But what explains the coldness of an entire administration? Does it take bag full of bones to get an administration to act? Wailing mothers tell the story of how the police barely heard them out when they reported their children missing. Perhaps because their parents were not big shot.

The unpleasant Nithari story of missing children and incomplete skeletons dumped into a drain tears into the heart. Especially when we recall the recent story of another missing child -- Anant Gupta, who was kidnapped in November 2006 and found within four days. Had the authorities acted with the same rage when they went missing, perhaps they too -- some of them or all -- would have been saved from a brutal death. They certainly deserved to live as much as Anant or any other innocent little child deserves to.