EPS-95 Pension at ₹1,000/Month: Is Yours Enough?

Millions of retired EPFO members under the EPS-95 scheme get as little as ₹1,000 per month. A pensioners' group is demanding ₹7,500 minimum. Here's what this means for your retirement plan — and what you should do right now.

Here's what happened: The EPS-95 National Agitation Committee has called for a nationwide protest demanding a minimum monthly pension of ₹7,500, up from the current ₹1,000 floor set in 2014.. EPS-95 covers crores of formal-sector employees; pension payouts are formula-based and often fall well below cost-of-living thresholds, especially for low-wage or short-career retirees.. Despite repeated appeals and earlier protests, the government has not revised the minimum pension amount, leaving pensioners dependent on supplementary income sources or family support..

What you should do: Check your EPS contribution history on the EPFO member portal (passbook section) to see how much has accumulated in your pension account versus your PF account — these are two separate buckets.. Calculate your estimated EPS pension using the formula: (Pensionable Salary × Pensionable Service) ÷ 70 — if the result is under ₹5,000/month, start building a parallel retirement corpus immediately.. Open or increase contributions to NPS Tier-1 — it offers an additional ₹50,000 tax deduction under Section 80CCD(1B) and builds a corpus that funds a market-linked annuity at retirement..

Your EPS pensionable salary is capped at ₹15,000/month unless you opted for higher pension under the 2022 Supreme Court ruling — meaning even a ₹1 lakh salary produces a pension calculated on just ₹15,000.

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