Bad Climate Allowance

The Bad Climate Allowance for postings in areas of unhealthy or adverse climate is now paid as the 7th CPC Tough Location Allowance, by area tier and pay level.

Updated 18 July 2026 · Reviewed by Salary-Calculator.in

The Bad Climate Allowance is the allowance that compensates a central government employee for serving in an area notified as having an unhealthy or adverse climate, the humid, malarial or extreme-weather tracts where the conditions themselves were treated as a strain on health and comfort. It was one of a family of location-based compensatory allowances, and under the 7th Central Pay Commission, notified through Department of Expenditure Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017, it is no longer paid under that name: it is subsumed into the Tough Location Allowance , drawn from the lower hardship cells of the Risk and Hardship Allowance matrix.

Of the four old location-compensatory allowances, the bad-climate one had the oldest logic and the weakest modern rationale. It dates from a time when a posting to a hot, humid or fever-prone district was a real threat to an employee’s health, before the spread of climate control, clean water and modern medicine softened the difference. The 7th Central Pay Commission dealt with that by folding the allowance, along with its siblings, into a single hardship-of-location payment rather than keeping climate as a heading in its own right.

This article sets out what a bad-climate posting meant, the standalone form the allowance took under the 6th Central Pay Commission, the 7th CPC rationalisation into the Tough Location Allowance, the tier rates by area and pay level, the important boundary with the Health and Malaria Allowance , the rules that limit an employee to a single such allowance, the dearness-allowance escalator, and the tax position. The rates below are the base figures in the 2017 order alongside the current figures, which stand 25 per cent higher because dearness allowance has crossed 50 per cent.

What a bad-climate posting meant

The idea behind the allowance was that some places are simply harder on the body than others. A district of high heat and humidity, a malarial belt, or a tract of extreme seasonal weather imposed a cost on the employee that the ordinary pay of the level did not capture, in discomfort, in the risk of illness, and in the wear of living in such conditions year round. The Bad Climate Allowance was the payment that recognised that cost, so that a posting to an unhealthy-climate area carried something extra for the strain it involved.

Unlike a risk allowance, it was not tied to any dangerous task. It was paid for being posted in the area, whatever the employee’s duty, which is why it belongs with the hardship allowances rather than the risk ones. In the 7th CPC framework that places it at the hardship end of the Risk and Hardship Allowance matrix, in the cells where hardship is present but the high operational risk of a field or commando posting is not.

The 6th CPC allowance and why the concept was rationalised

Under the 6th Central Pay Commission the Bad Climate Allowance was a payment in its own right, with a schedule of qualifying unhealthy-climate areas and a set of grade-linked rates. It sat alongside the parallel compensatory allowances for remote localities, hill areas and tribal areas, each with its own schedule and rate table, and the four together formed the location-compensatory group.

By the time of the 7th Central Pay Commission the standalone concept looked dated. Compensating an employee for the climate of a posting, as a heading separate from its remoteness or its general difficulty, sat awkwardly in a system that was trying to reduce dozens of overlapping allowances to a clean set. The Commission’s answer was consolidation: rather than judge whether a given district still deserved a climate payment, it merged the bad-climate allowance into a single hardship-of-location payment that captures climate, remoteness and terrain together in one tier.

Paid today as the Tough Location Allowance

The Tough Location Allowance is the name given to the three lowest hardship tiers of the Risk and Hardship Matrix, the cells R3H1, R3H2 and R3H3, where the location involves hardship without the high risk that lifts a duty into the field-area cells. Each tier carries two rates, a higher one for officers at Level 9 and above and a lower one for staff up to Level 8:

Tier	Matrix cell	Up to Level 8, base (Rs.)	Up to Level 8, current (Rs.)	Level 9 and above, base (Rs.)	Level 9 and above, current (Rs.)
Tough Location Allowance-I	R3H1	4,100	5,125	5,300	6,625
Tough Location Allowance-II	R3H2	2,700	3,375	3,400	4,250
Tough Location Allowance-III	R3H3	1,000	1,250	1,200	1,500

A notified bad-climate area generally falls in the lowest tier, Tough Location Allowance-III, because an unhealthy climate on its own, without the added burden of extreme remoteness, is treated as the mildest form of location hardship. A place that is both bad-climate and severely remote may be classified higher, but the bad-climate heading by itself points to the bottom of the table. Within the tier, the pay level decides which of the two rates applies, so a Level 6 clerk and a Level 10 officer in the same posting draw the same tier at different amounts.

The boundary with the Health and Malaria Allowance

The one distinction worth drawing carefully is between the Bad Climate Allowance and the Health and Malaria Allowance , because the two are easily conflated and are genuinely different. The Bad Climate Allowance, now the relevant Tough Location tier, is paid to every employee posted in a notified unhealthy-climate area, for the general hardship of living there. The Health and Malaria Allowance is a separate item in the R3H3 cell of the matrix, paid for duty that involves direct exposure to malaria-prone conditions or communicable disease, not for the climate of the posting as such.

The difference is between place and task. An office worker in a humid, fever-prone district draws the bad-climate Tough Location tier for the posting, but not the Health and Malaria Allowance, because their duty does not put them in the field against the disease. A worker whose duty is that exposure draws the Health and Malaria Allowance for the task. The two sit in the same corner of the matrix and can attach to overlapping geographies, but one answers where you are posted and the other answers what you do there.

Choosing between overlapping allowances

Because the four old location allowances became one, an employee cannot stack them. An employee draws only one Tough Location Allowance at a time, so a station that is at once bad-climate, remote and tribal still draws a single Tough Location Allowance at its assigned tier, not a sum across the old headings. The consolidation was designed precisely to stop the reconstruction of the old multi-allowance stack.

The Tough Location Allowance is also not admissible alongside the Special Duty Allowance for the North-Eastern Region and Ladakh. Where a posting qualifies for both, the employee is given the option and draws whichever is more beneficial. The Special Duty Allowance is a percentage of basic pay and the Tough Location Allowance is a flat tier amount, so the larger of the two depends on the employee’s pay, and the option lets each employee take the better figure rather than being locked to one.

The dearness-allowance escalator

The Tough Location Allowance rates rise by 25 per cent whenever dearness allowance rises by 50 per cent, the same escalator that runs through the whole Risk and Hardship Matrix. It pegs the tiers to the inflation index that drives dearness allowance, so the rupee amounts keep pace with prices without a fresh order each time.

The escalator has fired once. Dearness allowance reached 50 per cent with effect from 1 January 2024, lifting every tier by 25 per cent, which is why the table above shows both columns. Dearness allowance is now 60 per cent, but the next 25 per cent step-up does not arrive until it reaches 100 per cent, because the escalator moves in whole 50-point blocks. As no consolidated order re-tabulates the enhanced figures, an employee should confirm the current tier rate with the Drawing and Disbursing Officer before claiming.

A worked example

Take an employee at Level 8, so up to Level 8, posted to a notified bad-climate station classified in Tough Location Allowance-III, the tier such areas usually fall in. At the current enhanced rate the allowance is Rs. 1,250 a month, drawn over and above the basic pay of the level and the ordinary dearness and house-rent allowances, adding Rs. 15,000 over a year.

Suppose the same station is also within the North-Eastern Region, so the Special Duty Allowance at 10 per cent of basic pay would apply too. For an employee whose basic pay is Rs. 60,000, that Special Duty Allowance is Rs. 6,000 a month, well above the Rs. 1,250 Tough Location tier, so the employee opts for the Special Duty Allowance and draws that alone. This is the common outcome for a mid-level employee: the percentage-based Special Duty Allowance beats the flat lowest Tough Location tier, so the bad-climate tier matters most where the Special Duty Allowance does not reach.

Tax treatment

The Bad Climate Allowance is, as a rule, taxable as part of salary, and there is no general exemption for it as a class. A limited exemption for certain notified difficult and unhealthy areas survives under Section 10(14) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, read with Rule 2BB of the Income-tax Rules, up to a small fixed monthly figure, but it is a targeted concession rather than a blanket one, and it applies mainly under the old tax regime. The default new regime under Section 115BAC withdrew the great majority of the Section 10(14) exemptions, so an employee in or opting for the new regime should treat the allowance as taxable unless the specific surviving exemption applies.

Because the exemption depends on the exact area and the financial year, an employee with a bad-climate component should check the treatment of the specific posting rather than assume it is exempt. For the wider comparison see old versus new tax regime and income tax for central government employees .

The 8th CPC outlook

The 7th Central Pay Commission absorbed the Bad Climate Allowance into the Tough Location Allowance and set the base tier rates, and the 25 per cent escalator has lifted them once since, from 1 January 2024. Whether the 8th Central Pay Commission keeps the three-tier consolidation, revises the rates, re-draws the schedule of qualifying areas, or drops the bad-climate heading entirely is not known, and no figure for the allowance after the 8th CPC can be stated as fact until that commission reports and its recommendations are accepted. Until then the position is the three Tough Location tiers, standing 25 per cent above the 2017 base figures, drawn one at a time and not alongside the Special Duty Allowance.

In force today

The Bad Climate Allowance is paid as the Tough Location Allowance, drawn from cells R3H1, R3H2 and R3H3 of the Risk and Hardship Matrix, with bad-climate areas generally in the lowest tier, Tough Location Allowance-III. At the current enhanced rates, Tough Location Allowance-III is Rs. 1,500 a month for Level 9 and above and Rs. 1,250 up to Level 8, Tough Location Allowance-II is Rs. 4,250 and Rs. 3,375, and Tough Location Allowance-I is Rs. 6,625 and Rs. 5,125. An employee draws only one Tough Location Allowance, and it is not admissible alongside the Special Duty Allowance. It is distinct from the Health and Malaria Allowance, which is a separate matrix item for disease-exposure duty. Governing order: DoE Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017 (7th CPC Report, Chapter 8.10).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the Bad Climate Allowance?

The Bad Climate Allowance is a compensatory allowance for a central government employee posted in an area notified as having an unhealthy or adverse climate, historically the humid, malarial or extreme-weather tracts where the conditions themselves were a strain on health. It was one of a family of location-based compensatory allowances, and under the 7th Central Pay Commission it is paid as the Tough Location Allowance rather than under its old name, drawn from the lower hardship cells of the Risk and Hardship Matrix.

Does the Bad Climate Allowance still exist as a separate allowance?

Not under its old name. The 7th Central Pay Commission subsumed it, together with the Special Compensatory (Remote Locality) Allowance, the Special Compensatory (Hill Area) Allowance and the Tribal Area Allowance, into a single Tough Location Allowance with three tiers. An employee posted in a notified bad-climate area now draws the Tough Location Allowance of the tier assigned to that area, at the matrix rate for their pay level, in place of the separately named bad-climate allowance that existed under the 6th CPC.

How much is the Tough Location Allowance that replaced it?

It has three tiers drawn from cells R3H1, R3H2 and R3H3 of the Risk and Hardship Matrix, each with two rates. At the current enhanced rates, Tough Location Allowance-I is Rs. 6,625 a month for Level 9 and above and Rs. 5,125 up to Level 8; Tough Location Allowance-II is Rs. 4,250 and Rs. 3,375; and Tough Location Allowance-III is Rs. 1,500 and Rs. 1,250. Bad-climate areas generally fall in the lowest tier, Tough Location Allowance-III, with the exact tier set by the area’s classification.

Is the Bad Climate Allowance the same as the Health and Malaria Allowance?

No. The Bad Climate Allowance compensates for the general hardship of serving in an unhealthy-climate area, and it is paid to every employee posted there through the Tough Location Allowance. The Health and Malaria Allowance is a separate item in the R3H3 cell of the Risk and Hardship Matrix, paid for duty that involves direct exposure to malaria-prone conditions or communicable disease, not for the climate of the posting as such. The two can attach to similar geographies but answer different things.

Which areas qualify for the Bad Climate Allowance?

The qualifying areas are the tracts notified as having an unhealthy or adverse climate under the scheme, carried forward from the earlier bad-climate schedule. Each notified area is assigned to a Tough Location Allowance tier, most often the lowest, and the tier fixes the rate. The classification of a specific station is made in the relevant order, so the authoritative tier for a posting is the one that order sets.

Can I draw more than one Tough Location Allowance, or draw it with the Special Duty Allowance?

No to both. An employee draws only one Tough Location Allowance at a time, so a station that is at once bad-climate, remote and tribal still draws a single Tough Location Allowance at its assigned tier, not a sum of several. And the Tough Location Allowance is not admissible alongside the Special Duty Allowance for the North-Eastern Region and Ladakh; where both would apply, the employee draws whichever is more beneficial, not both.

Has the rate increased with dearness allowance?

Yes. The 2017 order provides that the Tough Location Allowance rates rise by 25 per cent each time dearness allowance rises by 50 per cent, the escalator that runs through the whole Risk and Hardship Matrix. Dearness allowance reached 50 per cent on 1 January 2024, so the current rates stand 25 per cent above the base figures, and the next step-up does not come until dearness allowance reaches 100 per cent.

Is the Bad Climate Allowance taxable?

As a rule the amount is taxable as part of salary; there is no blanket exemption for it as a class. A limited exemption for certain notified difficult and unhealthy areas survives under Section 10(14) of the Income-tax Act read with Rule 2BB, up to a small fixed monthly figure, but it is targeted and applies mainly under the old tax regime, which the default new regime under Section 115BAC largely withdrew. An employee should check the treatment of the specific area for the relevant financial year.

External references

References

Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, November 2015, Chapter 8.10 (Allowances Related to Risk and Hardship): recommendation to subsume the Bad Climate Allowance, Special Compensatory (Remote Locality) Allowance, Special Compensatory (Hill Area) Allowance and Tribal Area Allowance into the Tough Location Allowance, and the three-tier rates in cells R3H1, R3H2 and R3H3 of the Risk and Hardship Matrix.
Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017: Government decision on the 7th CPC allowances, effective 1 July 2017, including the Tough Location Allowance, the rule that only one Tough Location Allowance is admissible, and that it is not admissible alongside the Special Duty Allowance.
Sixth Central Pay Commission and the earlier Department of Expenditure orders on the Bad Climate Allowance (the standalone scheme, the schedule of qualifying unhealthy-climate areas, and the grade-linked rates that the 7th CPC replaced).
Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Office Memorandum No. 1/1/2024-E.II(B): dearness allowance revised to 50 per cent with effect from 1 January 2024, triggering the 25 per cent rise in the Risk and Hardship Matrix and Tough Location Allowance rates.
Income-tax Act 1961, Section 10(14) read with Rule 2BB of the Income-tax Rules (limited exemption for allowances granted for postings in difficult, unhealthy and scheduled areas, up to a fixed monthly figure).