The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) on Thursday relaxed rules to allow employees taking up government jobs after 60 years of age to enrol with the National Pension System (NPS).
The new rule will allow many retired bureaucrats and private technocrats taking up high-profile jobs in government and regulatory bodies to become part of NPS, a PFRDA official told FE.
While the current rule debars registration of employees aged 60 years or above with NPS when they join any government department, PFRDA has been approving them on a case-to-case basis.
?Keeping in view the difficulties being faced by subscribers, the authority has now decided to enrol all eligible government employees into NPS, irrespective of the age at the time of entry, subject to the condition that the total period of contribution to the NPS account shall not be more than 42 years,? PFRDA said in a circular.
Since 2004, new recruits in government are compulsorily enroled with NPS with the government making a matching contribution. Employees who have joined the government before 2004 can also enrol with NPS, but the government does not make any contribution.
Moreover, bureaucrats and technocrats who joined government departments or regulators post-retirement (after 60 years) did not directly qualify for joining NPS.
?Now, such enrolment will not require PFRDA?s approval,? the PFRDA official said. The NPS subscriber base grew from 4.3 lakh in 2008-09 to more than 53 lakh last year while the corpus went up from R2,277 crore to over R35,000 crore. The subscriber base increased significantly after employees of private companies and unorganised sector workers were allowed to enrol with NPS.
