The Employees State Insurance Act, 1948 (ESI Act) is a social security act that provides benefits to employees relating to maternity, sickness and employment injury. The Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), an autonomous body, is established under the ESI Act to administer the ESI schemes.
Under the ESI Act, the employer must provide the employees and workers with certain medical and other benefits. The employers have to register the employees with the ESIC within ten days of their appointment to their factory or establishment covered under the ESI Act. Failure to appoint employees with ESIC will attract a penalty.
The registration of employees with ESIC is fully online. The ESIC issued an office letter on 21.11.2019 restricting the online registration of employees with ESIC after ten days of their appointment to an establishment or factory covered under the ESI Act. The employers made many representations to the ESIC against the ESIC online system, which did not allow registering employees after ten days of their appointment.
The ESIC examined the representations and issued an office letter on 03.12.2019 stating that employers will be allowed to register employees online on the ESIC system even where there is a more than ten days difference between the date of appointment and date of registration. When the employer registers an employee after ten days of appointment, the insurance number of the employee and a show-cause notice will be issued to the employer.
The office letter dated 03.12.2019 issued by ESIC approves the registration of employees online after ten days of their appointment, giving an opportunity to employers for late registration of employees. When the employer enters the appointment date of an employee on the ESIC system that is beyond ten days at the time of the employee registration, a pop-up message will appear on the screen.
The employer needs to either accept or reject the pop-up message. When the employer accepts the pop-up message, the insurance number will be allotted to the employee, and a show-cause notice will be issued to the employer on the registered email ID. If the employers reject the pop-up message, they will be redirected to change the employee’s appointment date.
When the employer rejects the pop-up message and changes the date of appointment to be within ten days of the date of registration, relevant documents must be provided showing the date of appointment of an employee. Thus, if the employers want to do late registration of an employee, they have to accept the pop-up message and reply to the show-cause notice issued by ESIC on acceptance of the pop-up message.
The employer must submit a reply to the show-cause notice issued by the ESIC to the email ID within 15 days and provide the relevant documents to the Regional Office (RO) or Sub-Regional Office (SRO) for registering the employees with ESIC after ten days of their appointment.
The employers have to reply to the show-cause notice in the proforma sent to them by the ESIC within 15 days. The proforma is the reply to the show-cause notice issued by the ESIC for late registration of employees beyond ten days of their appointment. The employer can download the reply proforma sent by ESIC by logging into the ESIC portal after receiving the show-cause notice to the email ID.
Upon logging into the ESIC portal, the employer should click on the ‘Notifications’ option on the dashboard under the ‘Employee’ tab. After clicking the ‘Notifications’ option, the employer should click on the ‘Late IP Registration Status Notifications’ option on the next page, and the ‘Employee IP Details’ page will open.
On the ‘Employee IP Details’ page, the employer should click on the ‘Click here to Download Declaration Form’ option. The show-cause notice reply proforma will open, and the employers must download the proforma. The proforma of the reply to the show-cause notice is shown below.
The employer should fill the insured person’s particulars, employer’s particulars, details of the nominee, family particulars of the employee, the document of the employee to be submitted with the proforma and put his/her signature with seal. After filling the proforma and attaching the required documents, the employer must submit the proforma with relevant documents to the RO/SRO.
The employer must submit the following documents/records with the show-cause notice reply/proforma to the RO/SRO:
Upon submission of the reply (proforma) to the show-cause notice issued by the ESIC for employee registration after ten days of appointment, the concerned RO/SRO will either accept or reject the date of appointment of the employee. If the employer does not submit the relevant documents/records to the RO/SRO, the date of registration will be deemed as the date of appointment of the employee.
When the employer provides the relevant documents/records to the concerned RO/SRO within 15 days from the issue of show-cause notice, the regional officer/authorised officer will verify the documents/records and either:
The regional officer/authorised officer will issue an order regarding acceptance or rejection of the date of appointment of the employee. However, the appointment date will not be prior to the first day of the previous contribution period.
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