CAPF Constable salary

A CAPF Constable (General Duty) is a Level 3 post in the Central Armed Police Forces with an entry basic pay of Rs. 21,700 a month, in a cell range that runs to Rs. 69,100. With dearness allowance at 60%, house rent allowance at 30% and ration money, the in-hand in a peace posting in an X-class city is about Rs. 48,000 a month. In a COBRA battalion drawing the R1H1 cell of the Risk and Hardship matrix it is about Rs. 60,300.

The pay level is set by the Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 and confirmed at paragraph 2 of the Staff Selection Commission notice of 1 December 2025, which states the scale for every Constable (GD) post as Level 3, Rs. 21,700 to Rs. 69,100. The forces covered are the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal and the Secretariat Security Force, with Assam Rifles taking Riflemen (General Duty) on the same terms.

What separates a constable from any other Level 3 employee is the Risk and Hardship Allowance and the ration entitlement, and both are widely misquoted. The matrix cell rates rose 25% on 1 January 2024, when dearness allowance reached 50%, so the figures of Rs. 6,000 and Rs. 17,300 still in circulation are the superseded 2017 base rates. The RH-Max rate of Rs. 21,000 that appears in most listings is a notional cell that nobody is paid at.

This page works through the payslip line by line: the pay matrix cell and how it moves, the corrected Risk and Hardship rates, ration money and the force allowances, a worked comparison of a peace posting against two field postings, the tax position under the Income-tax Act 2025, the deductions, recruitment through the SSC examination, the promotion ladder, and pension. The base take-home for the level is computed by the salary by pay level calculator, to which the force allowances are added.

Monthly pay and in-hand

A constable in a peace posting in an X-class city, living outside the barrack, grosses about Rs. 51,548 a month and takes home about Rs. 48,000. Every figure below is for the entry cell of Level 3, Rs. 21,700, at the dearness allowance rate of 60% notified by Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 1/1(i)/2026-E.II(B) dated 22 April 2026 with effect from 1 January 2026.

Three things move this figure. A constable housed in a unit barrack draws no house rent allowance, which removes Rs. 6,510 of cash against accommodation in kind. A posting outside the 19 higher-rate cities named in the annexure to Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 21/5/2017-E.II(B) dated 7 July 2017 halves transport allowance to Rs. 1,800 plus dearness allowance, that is Rs. 2,880. And a qualifying field posting adds the Risk and Hardship Allowance, which is where the pay of a constable diverges sharply from that of a civilian at the same level.

The Level 3 cell and the annual increment

Level 3 runs from Rs. 21,700 to Rs. 69,100 across 40 cells, and basic pay moves one cell a year. The annual increment is 3% of the cell value, rounded to the nearest Rs. 100, so the column reads Rs. 21,700, Rs. 22,400, Rs. 23,100, Rs. 23,800, Rs. 24,500, Rs. 25,200, Rs. 26,000, Rs. 26,800 and onward. Five increments bring a constable to Rs. 25,200 of basic pay, and each of those rupees is multiplied by the dearness allowance percentage and by the house rent allowance percentage, so a Rs. 700 increment is worth about Rs. 1,330 a month of gross pay at the present rates.

The date of next increment is 1 January or 1 July, whichever follows six months of service in the cell. A constable appointed in, say, March draws the first increment on 1 January of the following year, not on the anniversary of appointment. Progression stops at the top cell of Level 3 unless the constable is promoted or takes an upgradation, which is the point of the Modified Assured Career Progression scheme described below.

Risk and Hardship Allowance rates

Since 1 January 2024 the Risk and Hardship Allowance for a constable runs from Rs. 1,250 a month at the mildest cell to Rs. 21,625 at R1H1. A constable is at Level 3, so the Level 8 and below column of the matrix applies; the higher column is for Level 9 and above.

The 7th Central Pay Commission folded 51 separate risk and hardship allowances into a grid of cells at Chapter 8.10 of its report. Each cell is graded by risk, R1 the highest to R3 the lowest, and by hardship, H1 to H3, and carries a flat monthly amount at two rates. Paragraph 8.10.66 attaches an escalator to the whole grid: the rates rise 25% each time dearness allowance rises 50 percentage points. Dearness allowance was 0% on the revised structure on 1 January 2016 and reached 50% on 1 January 2024, so exactly one step has fallen due, and the next arrives only when dearness allowance reaches 100%. It is 60% now.

RH-Max, quoted almost everywhere as Rs. 21,000 for a constable, belongs in no CAPF payslip. Paragraph 8.10.67 placed two allowances in that cell, Siachen Allowance and Antarctica Allowance, and the Government moved both out before the Resolution of 6 July 2017 took effect. Siachen Allowance now sits above the matrix at Rs. 42,500 and Rs. 30,000, and it is a defence entitlement. The highest cell a constable can actually draw is R1H1.

Which duty sits in which cell is decided by the Ministry of Home Affairs, not by the pay commission. Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017 placed the duties of the Central Armed Police Forces, and constituted a committee under the Union Home Secretary at paragraph 8 to classify field areas; that committee’s first review, Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/2017-PF(Pt.II) dated 22 February 2019, reclassified areas in Jammu and Kashmir and in the Left Wing Extremism districts. The matrix applies up to the rank of Commandant in field units.

Two conditions cut the allowance off. Leave of more than 30 days taken at a stretch stops it for the whole period of that leave, a rule the Ministry of Home Affairs applied to all Risk and Hardship Allowances for the forces by a clarification of 13 September 2019. And a constable elects between a matrix allowance and Detachment Allowance rather than drawing both, under the concurrency position preserved by paragraph 8.10.78 of the report. The Risk and Hardship Allowance article carries the full grid and the derived rates.

Ration money and the force allowances

Beyond the matrix, a constable draws a ration entitlement and three allowances that a civilian Level 3 employee does not.

The Ration Money Allowance settles the daily ration entitlement in cash where ration in kind is not issued. The rate for the year 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026 is Rs. 151.93 per head per day, up from Rs. 150.04 the year before, adopted at par for the Railway Protection Force by Railway Board letter No. E(P&A)I-2005/ALL/RPF-2 dated 13 February 2026. Over a 30-day month that is Rs. 4,558. The rate is priced against the cost of the authorised daily ration scale, so it moves with food prices and not with dearness allowance; the standing terms are in Ministry of Home Affairs order No. 27012/26/98/PF.I dated 7 September 1998, and the entitlement was extended to combatised gazetted officers up to the rank of Commandant by letter No. II-27012/66/CF-3040399/2008-PF.I dated 7 August 2017. Where the force feeds in kind, the constable receives food rather than the cash. The Ration Money Allowance article sets out the mechanism.

Dress Allowance for personnel below officer rank of the CAPFs is Rs. 12,500 a year, being the row 4 rate of Rs. 10,000 in Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 19051/1/2017-E.IV dated 2 August 2017 raised 25% from 1 January 2024 under the same dearness-allowance escalator that lifted the matrix. It is an annual payment, not a monthly one, so it does not appear in the table above.

A posting in the North Eastern region or in Ladakh carries Special Duty Allowance at 10% of basic pay, a flat rate under Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 11/1/2017-E.II(B) dated 18 July 2017. At the entry cell that is Rs. 2,170 a month. A constable detached from unit headquarters on temporary duty draws Detachment Allowance at a daily rate instead of a matrix allowance for those days, which is the election noted above rather than an addition.

Field posting against peace posting

A field posting does not automatically pay more, and at the lower cells it pays slightly less. The reason is that the two allowances a field posting removes, house rent allowance in a barrack and the higher-city transport rate, together come to Rs. 9,390 a month at Level 3 in an X-class city, which is more than the R2H2 cell is worth.

So the R2H2 constable is about Rs. 1,800 a month worse off in cash than the colleague at an urban CISF unit, and is compensated instead in accommodation, in rations issued in kind, and in the pension and promotion consequences of field service. It takes the R1H1 cell, the COBRA and anti-Naxal grade, to move the in-hand materially, and there it adds about Rs. 12,300 a month. That is the honest shape of the field premium at Level 3, and it is not what a headline figure suggests.

Income tax

A CAPF constable pays no income tax on any of these postings. Under the default new regime in Section 202 of the Income-tax Act 2025 the standard deduction is Rs. 75,000 and the Section 87A rebate of up to Rs. 60,000 makes a total income up to Rs. 12 lakh tax-free for a resident individual. A constable in an X-class city grosses about Rs. 6.19 lakh a year and one in a COBRA battalion about Rs. 7.65 lakh, so both sit far inside the rebate.

That makes the exemption question academic for this rank, which is worth stating plainly because it is asked constantly. The prescribed-allowance exemptions for the tax year 2026-27 are in the Table in Schedule III to the Income-tax Act 2025, read with the Income-tax Rules 2026 notified by Central Board of Direct Taxes Notification No. 22/2026, G.S.R. 198(E), dated 20 March 2026, and the new-regime restriction admits none of the risk and hardship family. Neither ration money nor the matrix allowance is exempt in the new regime. Neither needs to be, at Rs. 21,700 of basic pay.

The position changes only where a constable has substantial other income, or on promotion into the higher levels of the ladder, and the comparison then runs through old versus new tax regime and income tax for central government employees.

Health cover and the payslip deductions

The deductions on a constable’s payslip come to Rs. 3,502 a month, and there is no health-scheme line among them. Ayushman CAPF, launched on 23 January 2021 as a joint scheme of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the National Health Authority, covers serving personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces, Assam Rifles, the National Security Guard and the National Disaster Response Force along with their dependents, for cashless treatment at hospitals empanelled under PM-JAY or the Central Government Health Scheme. It carries no monthly contribution, which is why the CGHS slab of Rs. 250 a month for Levels 1 to 5 does not appear here.

The two deductions that do appear are the pension contribution of 10% of basic pay plus dearness allowance, Rs. 3,472 at the entry cell, and the Central Government Employees Group Insurance Scheme subscription of Rs. 30 a month for Group C, a rate fixed on 1 January 1990 and never revised. General provident fund does not arise, because a post-2004 entrant is on a contributory pension scheme rather than on the old pension scheme and its general provident fund.

No Military Service Pay

A CAPF constable draws no Military Service Pay, and no paramilitary equivalent of it exists. The Central Armed Police Forces are administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs and sit on the standard civilian pay matrix of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules 2016, the same matrix as every other central civilian post; Military Service Pay is confined to the defence services under the Ministry of Defence.

The gap this creates is easiest to see at the officer entry, where a CAPF Assistant Commandant and an Army Lieutenant both start at Level 10 and the Army officer additionally draws Military Service Pay of Rs. 15,500 a month. What the forces do share with the defence services is the risk and hardship grid and the ration entitlement, and neither of those is a pay element. Parity on Military Service Pay is a long-standing demand of the forces before the 8th Central Pay Commission, and it is a demand rather than a decision: nothing has been granted, and no figure for it exists to be quoted.

The forces and the post

Constable (General Duty) is the entry combatant rank across six forces, with Assam Rifles taking the same recruit as a Rifleman (General Duty). The Staff Selection Commission notice of 1 December 2025 names them as the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal and the Secretariat Security Force. The last of these is frequently misnamed the Special Security Force; it is the Ministry of Home Affairs force that guards government buildings, and it took 23 of the 25,487 vacancies in 2026.

The work differs sharply by force, from border guarding on the western and northern frontiers to industrial and airport security to counter-insurgency, and that is what decides whether a constable ever sees a matrix allowance at all. A CISF constable at an airport is on the same Rs. 21,700 basic as a CRPF constable in a Naxal-affected district and draws a different payslip for it. The entry rank, the pay level and the recruitment are common; the posting is not.

Recruitment through the SSC examination

Entry is through the Constable (GD) examination conducted by the Staff Selection Commission under a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Home Affairs, which supplies the vacancies and runs every stage after the written test. The 2026 examination, notice F. No. HQ-C-3007/10/2025-C-3 published on 1 December 2025, carried 25,487 tentative vacancies, 23,467 for men and 2,020 for women, the largest share going to the Central Industrial Security Force at 14,595 and the next to the Central Reserve Police Force at 5,490.

The eligibility is a pass in Matriculation and an age of 18 to 23 years reckoned on 1 January 2026, with relaxation of five years for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates and three years for Other Backward Classes. The Computer Based Examination is one objective paper of 80 questions carrying 2 marks each, 160 marks in 60 minutes, in four parts of 20 questions: general intelligence and reasoning, general knowledge and general awareness, elementary mathematics, and English or Hindi. A wrong answer costs 0.25 marks, and the paper is set at Matriculation level in English, Hindi and 13 regional languages.

Physical testing follows, conducted by the CAPFs rather than by the Commission. The Physical Efficiency Test is a run of 5 kilometres in 24 minutes for men and 1.6 kilometres in 8 minutes 30 seconds for women, with a separate standard for candidates of the Ladakh region at 1.6 kilometres in 7 minutes and 800 metres in 5 minutes. The Physical Standard Test sets height at 170 centimetres for men and 157 centimetres for women, relaxed to 162.5 and 150 for Scheduled Tribe candidates and to several intermediate figures for hill and North-Eastern categories. A Detailed Medical Examination and document verification close the process, and force allocation follows the merit position and the preferences filled in the application form.

The rank ladder and promotion

A constable rises through five subordinate ranks before the officer grades, each a level of the same pay matrix.

Promotion runs on seniority and departmental tests as vacancies arise, which in a large force can be slow. The Modified Assured Career Progression scheme is the answer to that: it grants a financial upgradation to the next level of the matrix at 10, 20 and 30 years of regular service, or at 10 years in the same level, whichever comes first. A constable who has not been promoted therefore reaches Level 4 pay at 10 years, Level 5 at 20 and Level 6 at 30, without holding those ranks. Assistant Commandant at Level 10 is the gazetted entry and is filled directly through a separate Union Public Service Commission examination, so it is not reached by promotion from the constabulary in the ordinary course. The salary by pay level page gives the pay at each rung.

Pension

A constable who joined after 1 January 2004 is on the National Pension System, contributing 10% of basic pay plus dearness allowance against a government contribution of 14%, or on the Unified Pension Scheme where that option was exercised. The two differ on the government share, which is the point most often missed: under the Unified Pension Scheme the individual corpus receives 10% rather than 14%, with a further amount estimated at 8.5% of aggregate pay credited to a separate pool corpus that reaches no individual account, under the PFRDA regulations of 19 March 2025.

The window to migrate ran from 1 April 2025 and closed on 30 November 2025 after two extensions, the second by Department of Financial Services order File No. 11/14/2025-PR dated 30 September 2025. A serving constable who filed no option remains on plain National Pension System with no further opportunity to switch; a new recruit still chooses at joining, in Form A-1 within 30 days. The Old Pension Scheme is closed to post-2004 entrants, and the demand to restore it for the forces remains a demand.

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• Pay matrix
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• 7th Central Pay Commission
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• Dearness allowance
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• Section 87A rebate
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• Central Government Employees Group Insurance Scheme
• Central Government Health Scheme
• General provident fund
• Modified Assured Career Progression
• Seniority
• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• Old Pension Scheme
• Central government employees in India

External references

• Ministry of Home Affairs
• Staff Selection Commission
• Border Security Force
• Central Reserve Police Force
• Central Industrial Security Force
• Department of Expenditure
• Income Tax Department

References

1. Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 (G.S.R. 721(E), gazette notification, 25 July 2016), the 7th CPC pay matrix, Level 3 from Rs. 21,700 to Rs. 69,100.
2. 7th Central Pay Commission report, Chapter 8.10, paragraphs 8.10.66 (the 25% escalator), 8.10.67 (RH-Max) and 8.10.78 (concurrency); Ministry of Finance Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017.
3. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017, and Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/2017-PF(Pt.II) dated 22 February 2019.
4. Ministry of Home Affairs order No. 27012/26/98/PF.I dated 7 September 1998 and letter No. II-27012/66/CF-3040399/2008-PF.I dated 7 August 2017 (Ration Money Allowance); Railway Board letter No. E(P&A)I-2005/ALL/RPF-2 dated 13 February 2026, RBE No. 14/2026 (Rs. 151.93 per head per day).
5. Staff Selection Commission notice F. No. HQ-C-3007/10/2025-C-3, Constable (GD) in CAPFs and SSF, and Rifleman (GD) in Assam Rifles Examination 2026, published 1 December 2025.
6. Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 1/1(i)/2026-E.II(B) dated 22 April 2026 (dearness allowance 60%); No. 2/5/2017-E.II(B) dated 7 July 2017 (house rent allowance); No. 21/5/2017-E.II(B) dated 7 July 2017 (transport allowance).
7. Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 19051/1/2017-E.IV dated 2 August 2017 (Dress Allowance) and No. 11/1/2017-E.II(B) dated 18 July 2017 (Special Duty Allowance).
8. Income-tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 30 of 2025), Section 19(1) Table serial 2, Section 202 and Schedule III; Central Board of Direct Taxes Notification No. 22/2026, G.S.R. 198(E), dated 20 March 2026 notifying the Income-tax Rules, 2026.
9. Central Government Employees Group Insurance Scheme, 1980, subscription rates fixed with effect from 1 January 1990.
10. Department of Financial Services notification F. No. FX-1/3/2024-PR dated 24 January 2025 and order File No. 11/14/2025-PR dated 30 September 2025 (Unified Pension Scheme).