Launch of virtual hearing in quasi-judicial cases under EPF & MP Act, 1952

As part of a series of initiatives taken by EPFO to improve the ease of doing business, a new facility for conducting a virtual hearing in quasi-judicial cases by use of secure IT applications.

Attached the Press release
PIB1654049.pdf (51.5 KB)

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As quoted from the PIB release:

"Virtual court is a concept aimed at eliminating need for physical presence of litigant and lawyers by facilitating adjudication of the case through online mode.

To facilitate this, virtual hearing utilities have been integrated with EPFO’s e-Court process on Compliance e-Proceedings Portal (https://eproceedings.epfindia.gov.in). This will facilitate issue of e-notices, real time recording of proceedings and communication of orders. Case status including the daily and final orders will now be accessible to all parties on the portal.

There are several benefits of hearing through video conferencing including no requirement of physical presence wherein parties do travel miles to be present in person for hearing and at the same time, it will be cost and time effective for the employers. Most importantly this will reduce carbon footprint. Digitization will reduce the number of pendency of cases and will be an effective remedy for delayed justice.

In addition, unnecessary adjournments due to non-appearance of parties could now be avoided resulting in fast tracking of dispute resolution and assessment of dues of workers to generate better confidence in the quasi-judicial mechanism. Hearing in online mode is a move towards the ultimate objective of faceless assessment…"

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