Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana (PM-VBRY)

What is the Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana?

Pradhan Mantri Viksit Bharat Rozgar Yojana (PM-VBRY) is an employment-linked incentive scheme of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, implemented through the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). PM-VBRY came into effect on 1 August 2025 and its registration window runs for two years, to 31 July 2027.

PM-VBRY has two purposes: to create sustained additional employment, and to pull that employment into the formal net by tying every rupee of incentive to EPFO enrolment. According to EPFO, the scheme has an outlay of Rs 99,446 crore and targets the creation of more than 3.5 crore jobs.

PM-VBRY runs in two parts:

• Part A rewards the individual, a first-time employee registered with EPFO receives one completed month's EPF wage, up to Rs 15,000, in two instalments.
• Part B rewards the employer: up to Rs 3,000 per month per additional employee, for two years in all sectors and four years in manufacturing.

Neither part needs a separate application form. Coverage flows automatically from the employer's monthly Electronic Challan-cum-Return (ECR) filing, provided the employee's UAN is Aadhaar-authenticated.

Who is eligible for PM-VBRY?

Employees can claim Part A if:

• They joined an EPFO-registered or exempted establishment between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2027.
• They had never before contributed to EPF or to an exempted provident fund trust.
• They are aged 18 to 54 years.
• Their gross monthly wages at joining are up to Rs 1,00,000.
• They hold an Aadhaar-authenticated UAN, verified through Face Authentication Technology on the UMANG app, and an Aadhaar-seeded bank account.

Re-joiners; people who had contributed to EPF earlier and rejoined the formal workforce within the scheme window, are also covered, subject to EPFO's conditions.

Employers can claim Part B if:

• The establishment is covered under the EPF & MP Act, 1952, including establishments with exempted trusts.
• It adds employment above its baseline and sustains those new hires for at least 6 months.
• It meets the threshold: at least 2 additional employees where the baseline is below 50, or at least 5 additional employees where the baseline is 50 or more.
• It furnishes PAN, GSTN and a PAN-linked bank account to EPFO.

Who cannot apply or is not eligible:

• A worker who has contributed to EPF at any time before 1 August 2025 cannot apply as a first-time employee under Part A.
• Employees earning more than Rs 1 lakh gross a month at joining are not eligible for a payment, though they still count towards the employer's additional-employment threshold.
• Employees below 18 or above 54 years at joining are not eligible.
• Establishments that do not cross the 2 or 5 additional-employee threshold get nothing under Part B, however many people they hire in total.
• An employee who voluntarily leaves before completing 6 months loses the first instalment; leaving between 6 and 12 months forfeits the second.

How is the employer's baseline calculated?

The baseline decides what counts as "additional" employment, and it is set three different ways:

• Establishments registered on or before 31 July 2024. The 12-month average employee count from 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025.
• Establishments registered between 1 August 2024 and 31 July 2025: the average from the date of registration to 1 August 2025.
• Establishments registered on or after 1 August 2025. A fixed baseline of 20 employees.

That last rule matters for start-ups: a brand new establishment must reach 21 employees before a single one of them counts as additional under Part B.

How much benefit does PM-VBRY pay?

Part A; first-time employees

The first instalment is one completed month's EPF wage, capped at Rs 15,000, payable after 6 months of service. The second instalment of the same amount is payable after 12 months of service and completion of the online financial literacy programme, with a portion retained in a savings instrument in the employee's name so the benefit is not spent at once. Both are paid by Direct Benefit Transfer to the Aadhaar-seeded bank account.

A "completed wage month" is a full calendar month for which the employer has filed the ECR. If the employee joins on or before the 5th, that month counts as the first completed month.

Part B: employers

Part B runs for 2 years for all sectors and 4 years for establishments in the manufacturing sector, with manufacturing defined by reference to Section 2(72) of the CGST Act, 2017 and evidenced by the GSTN certificate. Payment is made six-monthly in a lump sum to the establishment's PAN-linked bank account.

How to apply for PM-VBRY

1. Employees: activate your UAN. Get the Universal Account Number from your employer, then complete Aadhaar authentication using Face Authentication Technology on the UMANG app. This is the single step most people miss.
2. Seed your bank account with Aadhaar. Part A is paid by DBT, and EPFO holds the payment where the account is not Aadhaar-seeded.
3. Let the employer file the ECR. There is no separate PM-VBRY application form for employees; eligibility is picked up automatically from the monthly ECR filed against your Aadhaar-authenticated UAN.
4. Employers already with EPFO: furnish PAN, GSTN and a PAN-linked bank account on the EPFO employer interface so that Part B can be credited.
5. New establishments: register on the Shram Suvidha Portal or through SPICe+, which allots the PF code automatically and brings the establishment into the scheme.
6. Complete the financial literacy programme on the EPFO website before the 12-month mark, since the second Part A instalment is not released without it.
7. Track the credits through the PM-VBRY portal at pmvbry.epfindia.gov.in and your EPFO member passbook.

How do I check my PM-VBRY status?

Open pmvbry.epfindia.gov.in and use the beneficiary status option with your UAN, and cross-check your EPFO member passbook to confirm that contributions have been filed for each month you expect to count. Three flags decide everything: UAN Aadhaar authentication, bank account Aadhaar seeding, and the employer's ECR filing for the relevant month. If any of those is missing, the payment is held rather than rejected.

Why do PM-VBRY payments get held or stopped?

• UAN not Aadhaar-authenticated through Face Authentication Technology.
• Bank account not Aadhaar-seeded, which blocks the DBT.
• Employer has not filed the ECR for one or more months, breaking the completed-wage-month count.
• Prior EPF contribution found in the member's history, which disqualifies the first-timer claim under Part A.
• Employee left voluntarily before 6 months, forfeiting the first instalment, or between 6 and 12 months, forfeiting the second.
• Financial literacy programme not completed before the second instalment falls due.
• Establishment closed, or fraud detected, in which case incentives stop and amounts already paid are recovered.

How is PM-VBRY performing so far?

Figures placed by the Ministry of Labour and Employment in Parliament in August 2026, covering the scheme's first year, show Rs 744.58 crore disbursed to 13.18 lakh first-time employees under Part A, and Rs 2,068.84 crore released to establishments under Part B. More than 72 lakh first-time employees had been registered with EPFO since August 2025, against the two-year target of 1.92 crore, and roughly 30% of the beneficiaries were women.

These are progress figures, not entitlements. Nothing in the numbers changes an individual's eligibility, which depends entirely on the joining date, the prior EPF history, the wage ceiling and the age band.

Where do I complain about PM-VBRY?

• EPFO grievance portal, epfigms.gov.in. The official route, with a defined escalation matrix for unresolved complaints.
• Your regional EPFO office, for verification-related issues such as a disputed prior-membership record.
• Employer's HR or compliance team, for ECR filing gaps, which cause a large share of held payments and can only be fixed by the establishment.

PM-VBRY costs nothing to join. No agent can register you for the scheme or speed up an instalment, and EPFO will never ask for an OTP or your UAN password.

Common reasons for rejection

PM-VBRY has no application form to reject, so a "rejection" here means a specific record mismatch or timing gap that stops EPFO's system from releasing an instalment. Beyond the headline blockers already covered above (Aadhaar authentication, bank seeding, ECR filing), several narrower record-level issues account for most of the disputed cases.

Name or date-of-birth mismatch between Aadhaar and UAN records. If the name, spelling, or date of birth on the UAN's KYC does not match Aadhaar exactly, Face Authentication cannot complete and the UAN stays unauthenticated even though the employee has an Aadhaar card. Fix: raise a KYC correction request through the employer on the EPFO employer portal to align the UAN record with Aadhaar before re-attempting authentication.

Joining after the 5th of the month. EPFO treats a "completed wage month" as a full calendar month for which the ECR shows wages. An employee who joins on the 8th or 20th does not get that broken month counted, so the 6-month and 12-month clocks start from the following full month, not the joining date. Fix: none, this is a counting rule, but employees should calculate their instalment-due date from the first full wage month, not the joining date, before assuming a payment is overdue.

Multiple UAN records for the same person. A worker who unknowingly holds two UANs, often from an earlier job that was never closed out, gets flagged during the first-timer check and Part A is held pending de-duplication, even if the second UAN was never actively used. Fix: request UAN merger through the current employer and EPFO's member portal; do not attempt to register a fresh UAN to appear as a first-time member, since that compounds the discrepancy rather than resolving it.

Establishment misclassified for the manufacturing extension. Part B's four-year window applies only where the establishment qualifies as a manufacturer under Section 2(72) of the CGST Act, evidenced by the GSTN certificate. An establishment that assumes it qualifies without checking its GSTN classification will find its Part B incentive capped at the standard two years, or challenged on review. Fix: confirm the GSTN registration category before claiming the manufacturing rate, and file a correction with EPFO if the classification is wrong.

Baseline miscalculated by the employer. Employers sometimes compute their own 12-month average headcount incorrectly, undercounting or overcounting the 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025 window, which changes whether the 2-employee or 5-employee addition threshold applies. An employer that assumes the lower threshold when the higher one applies will see Part B claims rejected for employees who do not clear the real bar. Fix: recompute the baseline strictly from monthly ECR headcounts for that window, and use EPFO's employer-side calculator where available before submitting a Part B claim.

Wage crossing Rs 1 lakh after joining. The Rs 1 lakh ceiling is checked only at the point of joining. A later increment that takes gross wages above Rs 1 lakh does not retroactively disqualify an employee already accepted into Part A, but establishments sometimes wrongly withhold or self-reject a claim on this basis. Fix: employers should not stop a claim already in progress solely because current wages have risen past Rs 1 lakh; the eligibility test is fixed at joining.

Inactive or frozen bank account. A bank account that is Aadhaar-seeded but dormant, frozen, or closed after the UAN was set up will still fail the DBT credit even though the seeding check passes. Fix: confirm the account is active and operative, not merely seeded, before treating a held Part A payment as an authentication problem.

None of these situations need EPFO to formally "reject" a claim; each shows up as a payment that simply never arrives. Tracing it to one of the causes above, rather than assuming it is a generic system delay, is what actually gets it fixed through the employer or the EPFiGMS grievance route described earlier on this page.