The ESIC recovered over ₹3.27 crore after deploying the chatbot on February 2 alone in respect of companies located in Haryana

The ESIC has launched a crackdown to recover ₹2,473 crore social security money through 6.45 ‘Recovery Certificates’ linked to employers, pending for over a decade due to structural and legal hurdles.

Under the Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) Act, 1948, when an employer fails to pay required social security contributions, interest, or damages, the ESI Corporation issues a Recovery Certificate  to enforce collection in order to fund a self-sustaining and health insurance programme for workers.

Taking a leaf out of successful “Nudge (Non-Intrusive Usage of Data to Guide and Enable)” campaign of Income Tax department to recover evaded taxes, the ESIC too decided to give up the traditional coercive action and use technology to prompt owners to submit amount due to each of them, said Ministry sources privy to the development.

Though under the ESIC Act, the officials are authorised to issue orders for attachment and sale of the employer’s movable or immovable property and also arrest or detain  defaulters in extreme non-compliance cases.

Overall, 24,521 attempts were made before and after the chatbot were used to launch the campaign to recover ₹1,029 crore arrears across the country from employers as part of the Social Security Code, 2020. The ESIC had managed to get around ₹77 crore before the use of technology, sources said.

The ESIC, however, recovered over ₹3.27 crore after deploying the chatbot on February 2 alone in respect of companies located in Haryana. The system targeted individual companies, each holding an arrear of ₹5 lakh or more, as specified in recovery certificates carrying valid mobile numbers. The nudge messages were sent on all 133 mobile numbers registered in official records as that of either owners or other authorised senior officials of firms but it was delivered to 103 only was delivered, which worked out to 77 per cent delivery rate, as per the statistics of the recovery campaign launched.

Of that, 79 messages were read and the remaining 27 ‘failed’. Many of those who read messages paid their dues, sources stated. The messages on 27 failed which meant that those numbers were not ceded to handsets having functional WhatsApp facilities, sources explained.

Attempts made

The second effort was made on February 23, with a bigger sample of 1,191 target recovery certificates. Of that, the texts were sent to 957 mobile numbers of targeted audiences. It was delivered to 938 mobile phones, having a delivery rate of 98 per cent. Among them, 660 read the messages while it failed to get delivered at 234 remaining numbers.

After a gap of two months, the ESIC launched another wave of the chatbot recovery campaign. On May 1, it chose a bigger sample of 12,237 targeted audiences, sensing success from previous attempts. The nudge messages were dispatched to 9,476 mobile phones, with 9,206 receiving them which was 97 percent strike rate as 6,772 read them. The messages could not be delivered at 2,761 handsets.

Another exercise was done on May 2 with the biggest so far sample of 17,714 targeted audiences. The messages were sent to 14,313 and were delivered to 13,857 numbers, a 97 per cent strike rate as 9,485 of them read it but failed to land at the remaining 3,401 numbers.  The recovery on May 19 was ₹37.24 crores in 1,479 cases. The full impact of recovery received beyond May 19 is still being assessed, sources in ESIC said, adding that it is likely to cross ₹150 crores.

A major fraction of recovery certificates is being held up due to employer challenges pending in ESI Courts or High Courts. Claims are locked in cases before the NCLT or under liquidation, while many establishments have shutdown operations, filed for bankruptcy, or have original promoters or employers who are untraceable, with no attachable physical assets.

Published on August 24, 2026