Central Armed Police Forces

The Central Armed Police Forces, the CAPFs, are the seven armed police forces under the Ministry of Home Affairs, and their personnel are central government employees paid on the civilian 7th CPC pay matrix under the Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, not the defence pay matrix. They draw no Military Service Pay. That single absence, worth Rs. 15,500 a month at the officer entry, is the defining fact of CAPF pay and the standing demand of the forces.

The forces are the Assam Rifles, the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the National Security Guard and the Sashastra Seema Bal. Together with the Assam Rifles they carried 10,73,728 sanctioned posts and 61,738 vacancies when the Ministry of Home Affairs answered the Rajya Sabha on 29 July 2026, which makes the CAPFs the largest single block of armed central employees outside the defence services.

Two long litigations shape what a CAPF career pays. The first ended on 5 February 2019, when the Supreme Court cleared the way for Non-Functional Financial Upgradation, and the second on 23 May 2025, when it ordered the overdue cadre review and a progressive cut in the deputation posts that Indian Police Service officers occupy at the top of each force. A third, on whether the Old Pension Scheme reaches CAPF personnel recruited after 2003, is stayed and unresolved.

This article sets out the seven forces, the rank-to-level map on the pay matrix, the absence of Military Service Pay, the allowances that are specific to CAPF service and their tax treatment, the Organised Group A Service status and NFFU, the deputation problem and the 2025 directions, pension, the retirement age, what is paid when a person is killed on duty, health cover, strength and vacancies, and what the 8th Central Pay Commission can and cannot be said to change.

The seven forces

Seven forces carry the name: the Assam Rifles, the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the National Security Guard and the Sashastra Seema Bal. The Ministry of Home Affairs adopted the umbrella label Central Armed Police Forces in March 2011, dropping the earlier and legally inaccurate terms central paramilitary forces and central police forces. All seven are paid under the civilian pay rules administered through the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Two organisations are routinely and wrongly counted in. The Railway Protection Force is a Ministry of Railways force, not a CAPF, although it was dealt with alongside the CAPFs in the 2019 Organised Group A Service orders because both grievances travelled together to the Supreme Court. The National Disaster Response Force is raised from CAPF battalions on deputation but is a separate body under the National Disaster Management Authority.

The Assam Rifles has an arrangement none of the others share: it is administratively under the Ministry of Home Affairs but under the operational control of the Indian Army, and it is headed by an Army officer. That split does not change the pay position. Assam Rifles personnel are on the civilian pay matrix and draw no Military Service Pay, exactly as the other six.

Pay structure and the rank-to-level map

CAPF pay is a cell in the civilian 7th CPC pay matrix, read off the level for the rank and the stage for the length of service, under the Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules 2016 notified as G.S.R. 721(E) on 25 July 2016. Basic pay moves one cell a year at 3%, rounded to the nearest Rs. 100, through the annual increment, and pay fixation on promotion follows Rule 13 of those Rules in the ordinary civilian way.

The subordinate ranks occupy the lower levels. A directly recruited Constable is at Level 3, entry cell Rs. 21,700; a Head Constable at Level 4, entry cell Rs. 25,500; an Assistant Sub-Inspector at Level 5; a directly recruited Sub-Inspector at Level 6; and an Inspector at Level 7. Constables are recruited through the Staff Selection Commission Constable (General Duty) examination, which offered 25,487 vacancies in 2026 under notice F. No. HQ-C-3007/10/2025-C-3 published on 1 December 2025.

The officer cadre begins at Assistant Commandant, Level 10, entry cell Rs. 56,100, recruited through the Union Public Service Commission’s Central Armed Police Forces (Assistant Commandants) examination. That is the same entry level as a civilian Group A officer and the same level as an Army Lieutenant. Above it the ladder runs Deputy Commandant, Second-in-Command, Commandant, Senior Commandant, Deputy Inspector General, Inspector General, Additional Director General and Director General, with the top three tiers heavily occupied by deputationists.

A CAPF employee draws dearness allowance at 60% of basic pay, house rent allowance at 30%, 20% or 10% by city class, and transport allowance at the ordinary central rates, none of it modified by the force. Where the person is housed in a unit barrack, house rent allowance is not admissible, which removes Rs. 6,510 a month at Level 3 in an X-class city.

No Military Service Pay

CAPF personnel draw no Military Service Pay, and the gap that creates is Rs. 15,500 a month at the officer entry. Under the 7th Central Pay Commission, Military Service Pay is Rs. 15,500 a month for officers up to Brigadier and equivalent, Rs. 10,800 for Military Nursing Service officers, Rs. 5,200 for Junior Commissioned Officers and Other Ranks, and Rs. 3,600 for non-combatants (enrolled), all with effect from 1 January 2016. It is confined to the Army, the Navy and the Air Force.

The comparison the forces press is between a CAPF Assistant Commandant and an Army Lieutenant. Both enter at Level 10 with a basic pay of Rs. 56,100. The Army officer additionally draws Rs. 15,500, and because Military Service Pay is reckoned for dearness allowance and for pension, the gap compounds: at a dearness allowance of 60% the Rs. 15,500 is worth Rs. 24,800 a month in cash, and it enters the emoluments on which the pension is later computed.

No order extends Military Service Pay or an equivalent element to the CAPFs, and none has been proposed by a pay commission. The forces have sought parity on pay and pension repeatedly, and the demand is live before the 8th Central Pay Commission. It remains a demand: there is no sanctioned figure for a CAPF equivalent of Military Service Pay to quote, and any figure circulating as one is invented.

Allowances specific to the forces

Two payments separate a CAPF payslip from any other civilian payslip at the same level: the Risk and Hardship Allowance and the Ration Money Allowance. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017 placed the duties of the forces in the cells of the 7th CPC Risk and Hardship matrix, and Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/2017-PF(Pt.II) dated 22 February 2019 reclassified the Jammu and Kashmir and left-wing extremism areas within it.

The matrix grades a duty on two axes, risk and hardship, and pays by cell rather than by posting name. At Level 8 and below the rates since 1 January 2024 are Rs. 21,625 a month at R1H1, Rs. 12,125 at R1H2 and R2H1, Rs. 7,500 at R2H2, Rs. 5,125 at R1H3 and R3H1, Rs. 3,375 at R2H3 and R3H2, and Rs. 1,250 at R3H3. These are the 1 July 2017 base rates raised by the single 25% escalator step that fell due when dearness allowance reached 50%; figures of Rs. 6,000 or Rs. 17,300 still in circulation are the superseded base rates.

Ration Money Allowance settles the authorised daily ration in cash where ration in kind is not issued, at Rs. 151.93 per head per day for the year 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, which is about Rs. 4,558 in a 30-day month. It is not a risk and hardship allowance, it carries no matrix escalator, and paragraph 8.10.77(b) of the 7th CPC report says so expressly. It is drawn alongside a matrix allowance, not instead of one.

Detachment Allowance is the payment that is an alternative rather than an addition. A member eligible for a matrix allowance elects between that allowance and Detachment Allowance, whichever is more beneficial, under the Ministry of Home Affairs order of 22 February 2019 as circulated by the Central Reserve Police Force on 8 March 2019. CAPF personnel also draw Dress Allowance and, on posting to the North East and the island territories, Special Duty Allowance.

Tax treatment

Neither the Risk and Hardship Allowance nor the Ration Money Allowance is exempt from income tax under the default new regime, where the whole risk and hardship family is fully taxable. 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 them.

The point rarely bites at the constabulary ranks. A Constable in an X-class city grosses about Rs. 6.19 lakh a year and one in a COBRA battalion drawing the R1H1 cell about Rs. 7.65 lakh, both well inside the Rs. 12 lakh at which the Section 87A rebate reduces the tax to nil, after the standard deduction of Rs. 75,000 under Section 202 of the Income-tax Act 2025. The CAPF Constable salary page works the arithmetic through a full payslip.

It bites on an officer in a high-value cell, where the allowance is added to a Level 10 or higher basic pay and taxed at the marginal rate. The choice between the old and the new tax regime does not rescue the position either, because the old regime never exempted the risk and hardship family for civilian employees in the first place. The general position for the service is set out in income tax for government employees.

Organised Group A Service status and NFFU

The Group A executive cadres of the CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP and SSB have been Organised Group A Services since Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum dated 12 July 2019, which records them, and the Railway Protection Force, as treated as such for cadre review and related matters. That status is what unlocks Non-Functional Financial Upgradation, and the forces reached it only through litigation.

NFFU gives an officer of an Organised Group A Service the pay of a higher grade, without the post, once an Indian Administrative Service officer at least two batches junior is posted at the centre in that grade and the officer has met every promotion norm except the availability of a vacancy. It was introduced on the recommendations of the 6th CPC by Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/64/2008-Estt.(RR) dated 24 April 2009, and the attributes of an Organised Group A Service were spelt out in the Department’s Office Memorandum dated 19 November 2009. CAPF officers were refused it on the ground that their forces were not such services.

The Delhi High Court allowed their writ petitions on 3 September 2015 in G.J. Singh v. Union of India and directed the government to issue the notification granting NFFU within eight weeks. The Union appealed, and the Supreme Court disposed of the appeals on 5 February 2019 in Union of India v. Harananda, (2019) 14 SCC 126, holding that a pay commission is not authorised to define an organised service and that the benefit could not be withheld from CAPF officers in Pay Bands 3 and 4.

Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum dated 4 July 2019 then granted the benefits: NFFU with effect from 1 January 2006, and the Non-Functional Selection Grade at 30% of senior duty posts with effect from 6 June 2000, with the Directors General of the forces directed to extend them to eligible Group A executive cadre officers. The Office Memorandum of 12 July 2019 recorded the Organised Group A Service status itself. Neither the Assam Rifles nor the National Security Guard is named in those two orders.

Deputation, stagnation and the 2025 directions

Promotion in the CAPF officer cadre is blocked at the top by deputation, and the block tightens with rank. The cadre chart for the CISF Group A executive cadre placed before the Supreme Court in Sanjay Prakash v. Union of India shows the position precisely: the single Director General post is excluded from the cadre altogether, 75% of the four Additional Director General posts are on deputation, 50% of the 16 Inspector General posts, and 30% of the 67 Deputy Inspector General posts, while the 344 Deputy Commandant and 639 Assistant Commandant posts are filled almost wholly from the cadre.

The Supreme Court decided Sanjay Prakash v. Union of India, 2025 INSC 779, on 23 May 2025, Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan JJ. The Court proceeded on the footing that the government had already accepted the CAPFs as Organised Group A Services through the Office Memorandum of 12 July 2019, and issued six directions rather than a fresh declaration: the cadre review due in 2021 to be carried out within six months; the Ministry of Home Affairs to review the service and recruitment rules of each force within six months, after hearing representatives of the cadre officers; the Department of Personnel and Training to decide within three months of receiving the action-taken reports; and the deputation posts up to the Senior Administrative Grade to be progressively reduced within an outer limit of two years. The interim stay on the cadre review exercise was recalled.

The Court’s reasoning on stagnation was blunt about the cost. Cadre officers unable to obtain timely promotion suffer stagnation, and the Court recorded that such stagnation can adversely affect the morale of the forces. The two-year outer limit on reducing deputation posts runs to 23 May 2027, and the cadre-review and rules-review directions fell due on 23 November 2025.

Pension

A CAPF person recruited on or 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 before the window closed on 30 November 2025. A person recruited earlier is on the Old Pension Scheme under the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 2021, and by 2026 that group is close to exhausted at the subordinate ranks.

The Old Pension Scheme claim for post-2003 recruits is stayed, not lost. The Delhi High Court held in January 2023, on petitions by CRPF, SSB, CISF and ITBP personnel, that the Old Pension Scheme applied not only to the petitioners but to CAPF personnel at large, because the recruitment advertisements had issued while that scheme was in force. The Supreme Court stayed the operation of that direction on 5 July 2023 and directed that the petitioners abide by Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum No. 57/05/2021-P&PW(B) dated 3 March 2023. Until the appeal is decided, the National Pension System governs.

One Rank One Pension does not reach the CAPFs. It is a scheme of the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare for personnel of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, and CAPF personnel are central civilian employees. The separate argument that the CAPFs are armed forces of the Union for the purposes of pension is the argument that the Delhi High Court accepted in 2023 and that is now under appeal. The framework for the service as a whole is in central government pension.

Retirement age

Every rank in the CAPFs retires at 60. Until 2019 that was not so: personnel up to the rank of Commandant in the CRPF, BSF, ITBP and SSB retired at 57 under Rule 43(a) of the CRPF Rules 1955 and the corresponding provisions of the other three forces, while officers above that rank continued to 60. The CISF and the Assam Rifles already retired all ranks at 60, so the split ran within the CAPFs as well as against the civil service.

The Delhi High Court struck down the differential ages on 4 February 2019 in W.P.(C) No. 695 of 2019 and directed the government to fix a uniform age of superannuation for all ranks. The Ministry of Home Affairs order dated 19 August 2019 gave effect to it, fixing 60 in the CRPF, BSF, ITBP and SSB irrespective of rank. The change added three years of service, three years of increments and three years of qualifying service for every affected person still in service on that date.

The benefit is prospective. The Delhi High Court held in April 2026 that personnel who had already crossed 60 by 31 January 2019 cannot claim retrospective pensionary benefit from the enhanced age, so the order of 19 August 2019 does not reopen a settled retirement. The medical cadres are the one exception in the other direction: the General Duty Medical Officers and specialist medical officers of the CAPFs and the Assam Rifles retire at 65 outright under the proviso to Fundamental Rule 56(bb), as substituted by the Fundamental (Second Amendment) Rules 2018, notified as G.S.R. 767(E) on 11 August 2018. The wider position is in retirement age for central government employees.

Death and disability benefits

Central ex-gratia is Rs. 25 lakh where a CAPF person dies in an accident in the course of bona fide government duty and Rs. 35 lakh where death occurs in border skirmishes or in action against militants, terrorists, extremists or sea pirates, or at specified high-altitude and inaccessible border posts. The Ministry of Home Affairs set out the position in a reply released on 2 April 2025, recording the enhancement of the two rates from Rs. 10 lakh and Rs. 15 lakh respectively.

Four other payments run alongside it, all enhanced in the same round: the death-cum-retirement gratuity ceiling from Rs. 20 lakh to Rs. 25 lakh, assistance from the Bharat ke Veer Trust from Rs. 15 lakh to Rs. 25 lakh, the Risk Fund from Rs. 20 lakh to Rs. 30 lakh, and accidental death insurance under the Central Armed Police Salary Package from Rs. 60 lakh to Rs. 1.10 crore. Extraordinary family pension carries a floor of Rs. 18,000 a month, raised from Rs. 7,000, under the Central Civil Services (Extraordinary Pension) Rules, which also govern disability pension where a person is invalided out for a service-attributable cause.

The non-cash entitlements are as fixed. Reservation runs at 5% of Group C vacancies for the next of kin and dependants of deceased CAPF and Assam Rifles personnel, the Prime Minister’s Scholarship Scheme offers 2,000 scholarships a year at Rs. 3,000 a month for girls and Rs. 2,500 a month for boys, and 26 MBBS and three BDS seats are reserved for the wards of serving and deceased personnel. Between 2020 and 2024, 199 CAPF and Assam Rifles personnel died in the line of duty, the BSF losing 79 and the CRPF 66.

No official status of martyr attaches to any of it. The Ministry of Home Affairs told the Lok Sabha in December 2015 that the word is not used for casualties in the armed forces and is not used for CAPF and Assam Rifles personnel either; the recorded term is operations casualty. Entitlement turns on the circumstances of death as classified by the force, not on the label, so nothing in the ex-gratia, the family pension or the education benefits depends on the word.

Health cover

Serving CAPF personnel are covered by Ayushman CAPF, launched on 23 January 2021, which gives cashless and paperless treatment at hospitals empanelled under the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana in addition to the force hospitals. The scheme covers the CAPFs, the Assam Rifles, the National Security Guard and the National Disaster Response Force, along with their dependants, which is why a CAPF payslip carries no Central Government Health Scheme contribution deduction.

Retired personnel and the next of kin of deceased personnel sit under a different arrangement. They are entitled to treatment at Central Government Health Scheme or force hospitals, or to a fixed medical allowance of Rs. 1,000 a month, raised from Rs. 500 in the same round as the ex-gratia enhancements. A CAPF pensioner living outside a Central Government Health Scheme city therefore falls back on the allowance in the same way as any other central pensioner, a position set out in CGHS for pensioners.

Sanctioned strength and vacancies

The CAPFs and the Assam Rifles carried 10,73,728 sanctioned posts and 61,738 vacancies when the Ministry of Home Affairs answered the Rajya Sabha on 29 July 2026, an overall shortfall of 5.7%. The vacancy is not spread evenly, and the two largest gaps sit in the two largest forces.

The CISF carries the sharpest proportionate gap at 8.9% of its sanctioned strength, against 1.8% in the Border Security Force column. The National Security Guard does not appear in the reply, because it is manned by deputationists drawn from the Army and the CAPFs rather than by a cadre of its own, so its posts are counted against the parent services. Recruitment runs through the Union Public Service Commission for officers, the Staff Selection Commission for constables, and the forces themselves for the trades.

Bearing on the 8th Central Pay Commission

The 8th Central Pay Commission will revise CAPF pay along with the rest of the central civil service, because CAPF personnel are central government employees and no separate commission covers them. The Commission was constituted on 3 November 2025 and has not reported, so no CAPF pay figure attributed to it exists.

Three CAPF demands are already on the record and will be pressed before it: Military Service Pay or an equivalent element, restoration of the Old Pension Scheme, and a rationalisation of the Risk and Hardship matrix so that the cell rates track the duty rather than the posting label. The first two were pressed before the 7th CPC and refused. Nothing in the Commission’s terms of reference commits it either way.

As on 15 August 2026 the position is settled on every point except pension and deputation: CAPF personnel are paid on the civilian pay matrix without Military Service Pay, hold Organised Group A Service status with NFFU for the Group A executive cadres of five forces, retire at 60, and are on the National Pension System or the Unified Pension Scheme if recruited after 2003. The Old Pension Scheme appeal is pending, and the two-year deputation-reduction direction of 23 May 2025 runs to 23 May 2027. Any figure attributed to the 8th Central Pay Commission is a projection until it reports and the government notifies the revised pay rules.

Related Articles

• CAPF Constable salary
• Sub-Inspector salary
• Risk and Hardship Allowance
• Ration Money Allowance
• Dress Allowance
• Special Duty Allowance
• Military Service Pay
• Defence pay matrix
• One Rank One Pension
• Non-Functional Financial Upgradation
• Modified Assured Career Progression
• Deputation in the central government
• Pay matrix
• Pay fixation on promotion
• Annual increment
• Salary by pay level
• CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016
• Dearness allowance
• House rent allowance
• Transport allowance
• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• Old Pension Scheme
• CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021
• Central government pension
• Extraordinary pension
• Disability pension
• Death gratuity
• Retirement age for central government employees
• Central Government Health Scheme
• CGHS for pensioners
• Income tax for government employees
• Income-tax Act, 2025
• Standard deduction
• Section 87A rebate
• Old versus new tax regime
• Staff Selection Commission
• Central government jobs
• Central government employees in India
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Department of Expenditure
• 7th CPC salary calculator

External references

• Ministry of Home Affairs
• Ministry of Home Affairs: Central Armed Police Forces
• Union Public Service Commission
• Staff Selection Commission
• 7th Central Pay Commission report (doe.gov.in)
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare
• Supreme Court of India judgments

References

1. Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, notified as G.S.R. 721(E) on 25 July 2016 (the 7th CPC pay matrix and the annual increment).
2. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, submitted 19 November 2015: Chapter 6 on Military Service Pay, and Chapter 8.10 on the Risk and Hardship Matrix, including paragraph 8.10.77(b).
3. Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/64/2008-Estt.(RR) dated 24 April 2009 (Non-Functional Financial Upgradation) and Office Memorandum dated 19 November 2009 (attributes of an Organised Group A Service).
4. Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum dated 4 July 2019 (NFFU with effect from 1 January 2006 and the Non-Functional Selection Grade at 30% of senior duty posts with effect from 6 June 2000) and Office Memorandum dated 12 July 2019 (Organised Group A Service status).
5. Union of India v. Harananda, (2019) 14 SCC 126, decided 5 February 2019; G.J. Singh v. Union of India, Delhi High Court, decided 3 September 2015; Sanjay Prakash v. Union of India, 2025 INSC 779, decided 23 May 2025.
6. 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 (Risk and Hardship matrix placement for the CAPFs).
7. Ministry of Home Affairs order dated 19 August 2019, fixing the age of retirement at 60 in the CRPF, BSF, ITBP and SSB in pursuance of the Delhi High Court order dated 4 February 2019 in W.P.(C) No. 695 of 2019.
8. Ministry of Home Affairs reply released through the Press Information Bureau on 2 April 2025 (ex-gratia, Risk Fund, Central Armed Police Salary Package insurance, extraordinary family pension floor, compassionate appointment, scholarships and casualty figures for 2020 to 2024), and Rajya Sabha reply of 29 July 2026 (sanctioned strength and vacancies).
9. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum No. 57/05/2021-P&PW(B) dated 3 March 2023, referred to in the Supreme Court order of 5 July 2023 staying the Delhi High Court direction on the Old Pension Scheme for CAPF personnel.
10. Income-tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 30 of 2025), 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.