Hyderabad: Telangana high court has directed the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to pay 9% annual interest to IT firm Virtusa Consulting Services Pvt Ltd on Rs 4.05 crore that it continued to retain even after an appellate authority set aside the provident fund demand against the company.Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka directed that the interest be recovered from the officials responsible for the delay and paid to the company within eight weeks.In his order given on June 15, the judge also directed that the bank interest earned on the deposit during the relevant period be donated to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund.The directions came while disposing of a petition filed by Virtusa Consulting, which alleged that EPFO had failed to refund the Rs 4.05 crore deposited by the company in March 2020 pursuant to an order raising provident fund dues for the period between Nov 2008 and June 2015.According to Virtusa, EPFO had raised the demand on the grounds that the company had wrongly excluded components such as conveyance allowance, food coupons and special allowance while calculating provident fund contributions. It also alleged that the company had incorrectly applied the wage ceiling for international workers.“The appellate authority set aside the demand in May 2024. Yet EPFO neither challenged the order for over 18 months nor refunded the amount despite several representations,” the company argued, contending that the continued retention of its money was illegal and arbitrary.EPFO defended its action, maintaining that the provident fund demand was valid and that the company had underpaid contributions. It submitted that it had subsequently challenged the appellate authority’s order before the high court and secured an interim stay. Since the matter was pending before the court, the refund claim could not be accepted, EPFO argued.The court, however, observed that EPFO had failed to explain why it neither challenged the appellate authority’s order nor acted on the company’s repeated refund requests between May 2024 and Nov 2025.Holding that a public authority cannot indefinitely retain a person’s money without a valid protective order, Justice Bheemapaka described the delay as unjustified administrative inaction.
