Fill EPF Form 31 — PF Advance & Partial Withdrawal, Free, No Sign-Up

Form 31 — officially 'Application for Advance From the Fund' — is EPFO's form for taking an advance or partial withdrawal from your Employees' Provident Fund while you are still employed. It is a 4-page bilingual Hindi/English PDF. Unlike Form 19, which settles the whole PF account after you leave a job, Form 31 lets you draw part of the balance for approved purposes: medical treatment, buying or building a house, marriage, post-matriculation education, or unemployment over one month. It is not a loan — no interest, no repayment.

Yes. The Employees' Provident Funds Scheme, 1952 allows partial withdrawals — called advances — while you remain in service, and Form 31 is the application for them. Each purpose has its own eligibility rule: a medical emergency needs no minimum service at all, housing needs 5 years of membership, and marriage or education needs 7 years. The amount you can draw is capped per purpose — for example 6 times your monthly basic wages plus dearness allowance for medical treatment, or 36 times for buying a house. Because it is an advance and not a loan, EPFO never asks you to repay it and no interest is charged.

Each Form 31 purpose has its own limit. Illness (para 68J): up to 6 times monthly basic wages plus DA or your own share with interest, whichever is lower, with no minimum service. Housing (para 68B): up to 36 times monthly wages for a house, 24 times for a plot, after 5 years of membership. Marriage or education (para 68K): up to 50% of your employee share after 7 years, maximum 3 times in your career. Unemployment over one month (para 68HH): up to 75% of the total balance.

Under paragraph 68B you can withdraw up to 36 times your monthly basic wages plus dearness allowance for purchasing or constructing a house or flat, or up to 24 times for buying a plot of land. You need at least 5 years of PF membership, the property must be in your name, your spouse's name or jointly held, and this advance can be taken only once in your lifetime. A separate provision allows up to 12 times monthly wages for additions, alterations or repairs to an existing house, available 5 years after the house was completed. The withdrawal can draw on both the employee and employer share with interest.

Yes. Under paragraph 68K you can withdraw up to 50% of your own employee share of the PF balance with interest for your own marriage or the marriage of your son, daughter, brother or sister. You need at least 7 years of PF membership, and the advance can be taken a maximum of 3 times in your working life — a combined cap shared with the education advance. Only the employee contribution side counts toward the 50% limit; the employer share and pension contribution stay untouched. No wedding invitation or proof is required for the online route — a self-declaration in the claim is enough.

Yes. The same paragraph 68K that covers marriage also covers post-matriculation education — studies after class 10 — for yourself or your children. The limit is 50% of your employee share with interest, the service requirement is 7 years of PF membership, and each education advance counts toward the same 3-uses lifetime cap that marriage advances share. Typical uses are engineering, medical and other professional course fees. On the UAN member portal you select the education purpose in the Form 31 claim and self-certify — no fee receipt or bonafide certificate upload is demanded for most claims.

If you have been out of work for one month or more, paragraph 68HH lets you withdraw up to 75% of your total PF balance as a non-refundable advance while keeping the account alive — useful because the account keeps earning interest and your service history stays intact for pension purposes. If unemployment stretches to two months or more, you may withdraw the remaining balance as a final settlement using Form 19 instead. There is also an older provision (paragraph 68H) for advances when wages go unpaid for two months or a factory is locked out.

Log in at the EPFO member portal with your UAN and password, open Online Services → Claim (Form-31, 19, 10C & 10D), verify the last 4 digits of your bank account, choose 'PF Advance (Form 31)', select the purpose and amount, upload a scanned cheque or passbook page where asked, and confirm with the Aadhaar OTP sent to your linked mobile. No employer attestation and no paper form are needed. Prerequisites: an active UAN, Aadhaar seeded and verified, a KYC bank account with IFSC, and a mobile linked to Aadhaar. Most online advances are settled within 3-20 days; illness claims are often faster.

The paper route is for members who cannot claim online — typically because Aadhaar is not seeded to the UAN, KYC details mismatch, or the establishment is exempted. You print Form 31 (or the Composite Claim Form), fill it by hand or in an editor, and the form must be signed and attested by your employer before it goes to the regional PF office. If Aadhaar and bank details are already linked, the Composite Claim Form (Aadhaar) skips employer attestation even on paper. PDF Edit is built for exactly this offline path: type into the official non-fillable PDF, print, sign and hand it to your employer for attestation.

For online claims EPFO has moved almost entirely to self-declaration — the main upload is a scanned copy of a cheque leaf or bank passbook page showing your name, account number and IFSC. You also need your UAN, Aadhaar-linked mobile for the OTP, and PAN in KYC if your service is short. For the offline route you submit the filled Form 31 with employer attestation, and purpose-specific evidence may be sought: a doctor's certificate for medical advances, property or agreement details for housing, and a declaration for marriage or education. Keep your bank details exactly matching KYC — a mismatch is the most common rejection reason.

No and no. An advance sanctioned under the purposes of paragraphs 68B-68NN is a withdrawal of your own retirement savings for a permitted purpose — it is not a loan, so there is no EMI, no interest and no repayment schedule. It is also not treated as taxable income and no TDS is deducted on Form 31 advances, unlike a full settlement withdrawn before 5 years of continuous service where TDS under section 192A can apply on Form 19. The trade-off is real, though: every rupee withdrawn stops compounding at the EPF interest rate, so it is worth drawing only what the emergency actually requires.

Form 31 is for a partial advance while you are still employed. Form 19 is the final settlement of your entire PF balance after you leave a job — usually claimable 2 months after exit, immediately on retirement. The Composite Claim Form is the offline replacement that merged Forms 31, 19 and 10C into one document: the Aadhaar variant needs no employer attestation, the non-Aadhaar variant does. Online, the member portal presents one combined claim flow and you simply pick which claim type you are making. If you just need money for an emergency and intend to keep working, Form 31 is the right form — never close the account with Form 19 for a temporary need.

You can fill it here, but submission happens either on the EPFO member portal, online with Aadhaar OTP, or on paper through your employer to the regional PF office. PDF Edit opens the official 4-page Form 31 PDF in your browser so you can type into it neatly instead of handwriting — the official file is a flat, non-fillable PDF, which is why some sites charge for a fillable clone. Here it is free: no account, no watermark, and complete privacy. Your UAN, bank account number and Aadhaar details never leave your device, because the editor runs entirely client-side.

Most online Form 31 advances are settled within 3-20 days of Aadhaar-OTP submission, and illness claims are often paid in as little as 3-7 days under EPFO's auto-settlement. 'Claim status under process' on the member portal simply means the claim has passed initial scrutiny and is queued with the regional PF office — no action is needed unless it changes to 'rejected'. If it stays under process beyond 20 days, raise an EPFiGMS grievance; common causes of rejection are bank account/IFSC mismatches with KYC and name mismatches with Aadhaar.