West Bengal mandates electronic LWF payment from 1 December 2020

West Bengal made Labour Welfare Fund payment electronic from 1 December 2020. Remittance runs through the state's online system rather than by challan, and the route is mandatory rather than optional. The mandate matters more in West Bengal than it would elsewhere because of the state's contribution structure. West Bengal is Rs. 3 from the employee and Rs. 30 from the employer - a one-to-ten ratio, the widest of any state. The employee deduction is close to symbolic while the employer share is the real number, so the payment being correct matters far more than the deduction being correct. Mandatory electronic payment introduces the credential risk that runs through every online statutory system. A login tied to a departed employee's email or mobile number is the most common reason a remittance is missed, and it fails silently: nothing in payroll errors, the deduction still appears on the payslip, and only the money never arrives. Hold the credentials at the organisation, confirm which mobile receives the one-time passwords, and download the acknowledgement each cycle. The failure mode is worth stating plainly. If the deduction is made from wages and the remittance is not completed, the employer is holding money deducted from employees for a statutory fund. That is a materially worse position than never having deducted at all. Note also that West Bengal collects half-yearly, so a missed remittance sits undetected for six months before the next one falls due, which is long enough for the credential problem that caused it to be forgotten.