CGHS for Pensioners

CGHS for pensioners is the set of rules under which a central government pensioner joins the Central Government Health Scheme after retirement, and the central figure is the whole-life card: 120 months of contribution at the rate for the pay level held at retirement, paid once, for cover that lasts the rest of the pensioner’s life. The four amounts printed at paragraph B(e) of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Office Memorandum No. S.11012/1/2024-EHS dated 27 June 2024 are Rs. 30,000 for pay Level 1 to 5, Rs. 54,000 for Level 6, Rs. 78,000 for Level 7 to 11, and Rs. 1,20,000 for Level 12 and above.

The card does not follow the pensioner automatically. In service the cover is administrative: the contribution is recovered from salary and the card is sponsored by the head of office. On the last day of service that arrangement ends, and the retiree has to apply, pay and be issued a separate pensioner card. The 27 June 2024 guidelines let a retiring employee start that application six months before the date of retirement, along with the pension papers, which is the only reliable way to avoid an interval in which the family holds no card.

Two figures decide almost everything else. The contribution slab runs on the pay level held at retirement, not on the pension, so a Level 7 retiree pays Rs. 650 a month or Rs. 78,000 once whatever the pension works out to. The ward entitlement in an empanelled hospital runs on the basic pay drawn at retirement, against the thresholds of the Office Memorandum of 28 October 2022, and it is frozen there, because a pensioner draws no further increments.

This article covers the choice between the annual and the whole-life card, the slab and the amounts, the application, the documents and the Bharatkosh challan, the electronic card and the Rs. 100 plastic-card fee, conversion of a yearly card by paying the balance, transfer of the card to the surviving spouse, the ward entitlement, what the card covers, portability between the 81 CGHS cities, the position of a pensioner outside them, the dependants, the deduction under Section 126 of the Income-tax Act 2025, the election against Ayushman Vay Vandana at 70, and what the 8th Central Pay Commission can change. The design of the scheme as a whole is in the CGHS article.

Joining after retirement

A central government pensioner drawing pension from Central Civil Estimates, and residing in a CGHS city, is eligible for a pensioner CGHS card for themselves and their dependent family members. Paragraph B(a) of the Office Memorandum of 27 June 2024 states the eligibility in those terms and extends it to family pensioners in their own right, so a widow or widower drawing a family pension may hold a card even where the deceased never took one.

The pensioner card replaces the serving-employee card rather than continuing it. It covers the dependants who satisfy the scheme’s dependant test at the time of the application, which is not necessarily the same set who were on the service card years earlier. A retiree who never used CGHS in service, because the posting was in a city with no Wellness Centre, can join on settling in a CGHS city, and a pensioner who relocates into a CGHS city ten years into retirement can join then. Nothing in the 2024 guidelines closes the door at the moment of retiring.

The pension scheme the retiree served under makes no difference. A pensioner under the Old Pension Scheme, a retiree under the National Pension System and one under the Unified Pension Scheme join on the same terms, because CGHS eligibility follows from central government service and from drawing pension on Central Civil Estimates, not from the scheme that computes the pension. What the service record supplies to CGHS is the pay level at retirement, which fixes the contribution, and the basic pay at retirement, which fixes the ward.

The annual card and the whole-life card

A pensioner pays either twelve months of contribution at a time, renewing each year, or 120 months once for a card valid for the rest of their life. Paragraph B(e) of the Office Memorandum of 27 June 2024 sets the whole-life contribution at 120 times the existing CGHS contribution rate at the time of retirement, and prints the amount against each pay-level band.

The monthly rates are those fixed by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Office Memorandum No. S.11011/11/2016-CGHS(P)/EHS dated 9 January 2017 on the recommendations of the 7th Central Pay Commission, effective from 1 February 2017. Nothing has revised them since, so the same four slabs govern a serving employee’s monthly recovery and a pensioner’s one-time payment alike.

For a pensioner who expects to remain in a CGHS city the whole-life card is the better purchase, and the arithmetic is not close. Superannuation at 60 leaves a retirement that runs two or three decades on ordinary life expectancy, against which the card buys ten years of contribution. The cost per year of cover therefore falls every year the pensioner lives, and a whole-life holder who moves to another CGHS city pays nothing again on the transfer, which an annual holder cannot say. The annual card earns its place only where the pensioner is genuinely unsettled, and even then the conversion route below removes most of the penalty for starting on it.

The contribution slab

The slab is the contribution for the pay level held at the time of retirement, and the pension figure does not enter the calculation. A pensioner who retired from Level 7 pays Rs. 650 a month, or Rs. 78,000 once for a whole-life card, whether the pension is Rs. 22,450 or Rs. 40,000, because the 9 January 2017 order expresses the contribution against the pay matrix level and the 27 June 2024 order repeats it that way for the whole-life amount.

This is the single point on which pensioners most often miscalculate, because every other retirement figure they are handling at the same moment, the pension itself, dearness relief, commutation, is worked out on the pension or on the last basic pay. The contribution is not. It tracks the band the employee occupied in service, which keeps a pensioner on the same contribution as a serving employee at the same level, and it means the whole-life amount can be read straight off the table above without any pension computation at all.

One consequence catches retirees who were promoted late. The level that counts is the one held on the last day of service, so an employee promoted from Level 11 to Level 12 in their final year moves from the Rs. 650 slab to the Rs. 1,000 slab and from a Rs. 78,000 whole-life card to a Rs. 1,20,000 one. The slab-by-level table is in the contribution and ward entitlement article.

The Fixed Medical Allowance and the IPD only card

A pensioner may draw the Fixed Medical Allowance of Rs. 1,000 a month and hold a CGHS card at the same time, provided the card is an IPD only card and the full subscription is paid. Paragraph B(b) of the Office Memorandum of 27 June 2024 states the option in terms: the pensioner has the option of availing the Fixed Medical Allowance with a CGHS card, described in the order as an IPD card, on payment of the full subscription. That corrects the widespread belief, which this article previously carried, that the allowance must be surrendered before any card can issue.

What the IPD only card buys is bounded. It is valid for cashless indoor treatment at CGHS empanelled private hospitals and at designated government hospitals, and the holder is eligible for reimbursement of indoor treatment at any government or private hospital only in a medical emergency. It buys no outpatient care: no Wellness Centre consultation, no free monthly medicines, no listed investigations on a Wellness Centre prescription. The full card buys those; the IPD only card does not.

The prohibited combination is therefore narrower than “the allowance and a card”. It is the Fixed Medical Allowance together with CGHS outpatient care, and the reason is that both answer the same need from opposite ends of the CGHS map: Rs. 1,000 a month in cash where there is no Wellness Centre to attend, care in kind where there is. A pensioner who wants full CGHS outpatient cover surrenders the allowance; a pensioner who wants to keep the cash for day-to-day expenses takes the IPD only card and keeps the hospital cover. Paragraph B(f)(vi) requires proof of availing or non-availing the Fixed Medical Allowance with the application, which is how CGHS enforces the boundary at the point of issue.

Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum No. 4/05/2019-P&PW(D) dated 23 March 2022 sets the procedure and the timelines for changing between the allowance and CGHS outpatient care, and permits only one such change in the lifetime of a pensioner or family pensioner. A pensioner who moves from a non-CGHS town into a CGHS city, or the other way, therefore has exactly one switch available, and should spend it on the move that is likely to be permanent.

Applying, the documents and the Bharatkosh challan

A retiring employee may apply for the pensioner card six months before the date of retirement, along with the pension papers, and paragraph B(g) of the Office Memorandum of 27 June 2024 says so expressly. The application at that stage is made online as a pensioner new card, and the office follows the same procedure it would for a serving employee’s card. This is the provision that closes the gap: the serving card lapses on the last day of service, and only an application started months earlier reliably produces a pensioner card by that date.

The contribution is paid first, on the Bharatkosh portal, and the challan generated there is attached to the application as proof of payment. Paragraph B(d) requires that sequence, so the payment is not made against a card already issued but the other way round. The application itself goes in the card application form at Annexure 3 to the order, addressed to the Additional Director of the CGHS city concerned.

Paragraph B(f) lists the documents CGHS scrutinises, and the list is shorter than most pensioners expect:

• a self-attested Pension Payment Order or provisional Pension Payment Order, or the last pay certificate;
• Aadhaar or PAN card, or another valid document under the Reserve Bank of India guidelines, as identity proof for the pensioner and each dependent family member;
• the disability certificate of a dependant, where one applies;
• photographs of the pensioner and each dependent family member;
• a copy of the Bharat Kosh challan for the subscription paid;
• proof of availing or non-availing the Fixed Medical Allowance, where applicable.

The Pension Payment Order and the last pay certificate are alternatives, not both, which matters because the Pension Payment Order is often the document a retiree is still waiting for. A provisional Pension Payment Order is expressly accepted. A pensioner who applies after the serving card has lapsed can still join, and nothing is forfeited, but the family carries the interval uncovered, which is the avoidable cost of applying late.

The electronic card and the plastic card

The electronic CGHS card is at par with the plastic card for availing benefits, so a pensioner needs no physical card to use the scheme. Paragraph C of the Office Memorandum of 27 June 2024 makes the electronic card accessible through the Beneficiary Login option on the CGHS website and through the myCGHS and DigiLocker apps on Android and iOS devices, and puts it on the same footing as the plastic card. The authenticity of a card can be checked by anyone through the Verify Beneficiary option on the same website.

A fresh plastic card, on mutilation, renewal or loss, costs Rs. 100. Paragraph D requires application form AA or BB, at Annexures 4 and 5 to the order, together with a Bharatkosh challan for Rs. 100, submitted to the Additional Director concerned. The same paragraph levies no fee where the beneficiary opts for renewal or reissue without a fresh printed plastic card, a deliberate nudge towards the digital card. For a pensioner replacing a card lost in a house move, the choice is between Rs. 100 and nothing.

Converting a yearly card to a whole-life card

A pensioner who took an annual card can convert to a whole-life card by paying the balance of the ten years, with the contributions already made credited. The CGHS frequently asked questions state the rule through a worked example: where the beneficiary had contributed for seven years, the balance payment for the remaining three years is what buys the life-time card. Ten years of contribution is the price of a life-time card however it is assembled, in one payment or in instalments across a decade.

That removes most of the risk from starting on an annual card. A pensioner who retires uncertain whether they will stay in the CGHS city, perhaps because a move to live with a son or daughter is possible, can take the annual card, use the Wellness Centre, and convert once the question settles, without having wasted the annual payments. What the annual card does not offer in the meantime is the immunity from further payment that a whole-life holder enjoys on a transfer between cities.

The pensioner who bought a whole-life card years ago is protected against the rate revisions that followed. A beneficiary who had already obtained a card with life-time validity by paying the lump sum equal to ten years of contribution was not asked for any additional amount when the 9 January 2017 order raised the rates on the 7th CPC recommendations. The card stands at the price paid, and only fresh cards and balance payments run on the current slabs.

Transfer of the card to the surviving spouse

On the death of the pensioner, the ownership of the CGHS card is transferred to the surviving spouse, and the same card continues. The CGHS frequently asked questions set out the mechanism: the Additional Director of the city concerned transfers the ownership in the CGHS database, and the same plastic card with the same beneficiary identification number remains in use, so the family is not issued a fresh identity in the system. The documents are an application in the prescribed format and proof of the family pension, with its break-up, from the bank.

The payment position on that transfer turns on which card the deceased held. Where the card was a life-time card, no extra payment is made. Where the deceased had been paying yearly, the balance of the ten years is payable to convert the transferred card into a life-time card, on the same arithmetic as any other conversion, and the prescribed contribution is payable if the card is not to be a life-time one.

This is the strongest single argument for the whole-life card at the point of retirement, and it is an argument about the surviving spouse rather than about the pensioner. A Level 7 retiree who pays Rs. 78,000 once has bought medical cover that follows the family pension to the widow or widower without a further rupee and without a fresh application for a card. A retiree who pays Rs. 650 a month instead leaves the survivor to find the balance of ten years at the worst possible moment.

Ward entitlement in an empanelled hospital

A pensioner’s ward entitlement is fixed by the basic pay drawn at retirement, against the thresholds set by the Office Memorandum of 28 October 2022: a general ward up to a basic pay of Rs. 36,500 a month, a semi-private ward from Rs. 36,501 to Rs. 50,500, and a private ward above Rs. 50,500. Unlike a serving employee’s entitlement, which climbs as increments lift the basic pay, a pensioner’s is settled on the last day of service and does not move afterwards.

The 2022 order lowered the thresholds, which moved a large number of beneficiaries up a ward class. The figures it replaced, set by the 9 January 2017 order, were a general ward up to Rs. 47,600 and a semi-private ward up to Rs. 63,100, with a private ward above that. A pensioner who retired between those two orders and whose basic pay falls between the old and the new figures is therefore entitled to a better ward than the card issued at retirement shows, and an empanelled hospital reads the ward class printed on the card rather than the pensioner’s basic pay. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare clarification of 22 November 2022 requires such a beneficiary, serving or pensioner, to apply for a fresh card before the upgraded entitlement can be used.

One qualification runs the other way. For a pensioner who retired before the 7th Central Pay Commission came into force the government has stated that there is no proposal to apply the revised entitlement thresholds, so a pre-2016 retiree keeps the entitlement fixed under the rules in force at their retirement rather than being tested against the current basic-pay bands. The room charges and package loading that each ward class carries, under the rate memorandum of 3 October 2025, are set out in the contribution and ward entitlement article.

What the card covers

A full pensioner CGHS card buys the same package a serving employee’s card buys: outpatient consultation at a Wellness Centre, medicines issued free against a Wellness Centre prescription, listed investigations at empanelled laboratories, specialist consultation, and hospitalisation at CGHS rates in empanelled hospitals and government hospitals. The contribution is not a premium against a metered service; it buys access, and a pensioner who spends a month in intensive care pays the same contribution as one who never attends.

Hospitalisation runs on a referral. The referral rules revised on 28 June 2024 allow a beneficiary to obtain a referral from a Wellness Centre medical officer, and treatment at an empanelled hospital is then cashless for a pensioner. The rates the hospital may charge are those notified by CGHS Office Memorandum No. 5-16/CGHS(HQ)/HEC/2024(Part I) dated 3 October 2025, which superseded every earlier rate memorandum: the notified rate is the semi-private ward rate, a general ward is charged 5% below it and a private ward 5% above, and the intensive care unit charge is Rs. 5,400 a day whatever the ward entitlement.

For a pensioner the recurring value sits in the outpatient half rather than the hospital half. A chronic condition such as diabetes or hypertension is managed on medicines drawn month after month for the rest of a life, which no ordinary health-insurance policy meets and which the Wellness Centre issues free. That is the part of the card an annual holder loses in any month the renewal lapses, and the part an IPD only card never had.

Moving between CGHS cities

A pensioner who moves to another CGHS city applies to the Additional Director of the new city for transfer of the card, and the card is transferred online. The CGHS frequently asked questions describe the sequence: the transfer is made online, a receipt is issued to the beneficiary, and the Additional Director of the new city receives the data on the strength of it. The same plastic card and the same beneficiary identification number remain valid, because it is the beneficiary identification number, not the city, that the CGHS system reads.

No contribution is payable again on the move for a pensioner holding a life-time card. That is the practical answer to the objection most often raised against the whole-life card, that a pensioner buying cover in Delhi is stuck in Delhi. Within the 81 CGHS cities recorded in the reply to Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 2470, answered on 13 February 2026, the card follows the pensioner at no cost. The limit of the portability is the map: a move to a town with no Wellness Centre takes the pensioner outside the outpatient network altogether.

The pensioner outside a CGHS city

A pensioner residing where there is no CGHS Wellness Centre draws the Fixed Medical Allowance of Rs. 1,000 a month for outpatient expenses, and may hold a CGHS IPD only card for hospitalisation alongside it. The allowance was raised from Rs. 500 to Rs. 1,000 with effect from 1 July 2017 by Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum No. 4/34/2017-P&PW(D) dated 19 July 2017, and it is a flat monthly payment against which no bills or vouchers are submitted.

The combination is expressly permitted, not a grey area. Paragraph B(b) of the Office Memorandum of 27 June 2024 provides for it on the CGHS side, and Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum No. 4/05/2019-P&PW(D) dated 23 March 2022 provides for it on the pension side, requiring the CGHS authorities to certify that the pensioner is availing only the inpatient facility before the allowance is drawn alongside the card. A pensioner in a district town two hours from the nearest CGHS city can therefore hold the cash allowance for the chemist and the local doctor, and cashless admission at an empanelled hospital in that city for anything serious.

The full subscription is payable for the IPD only card. The order gives no discount for the outpatient benefit forgone, so a Level 7 retiree in a non-CGHS town pays the same Rs. 78,000 for a whole-life IPD only card as one in Delhi pays for a card that also opens the Wellness Centre. Whether that is worth it turns on the distance to the nearest empanelled hospital, because the card’s remaining value is entirely in admissions.

Dependants on a pensioner card

The pensioner card covers the family members who satisfy the CGHS dependant test, and the test is dependency and residence, not relationship alone. The spouse is covered without any dependency condition. Dependent children, parents, sisters, widowed sisters, widowed daughters, minor brothers and minor sisters are covered where they are wholly dependent on the pensioner and normally residing with them, and dependent divorced or separated daughters, their dependent minor children, and the step-mother are included. The income ceiling for dependency is the one fixed by the Office Memorandum of 5 April 2017 and revised from time to time; a dependant with a disability is covered without an age bar, on the disability certificate that paragraph B(f)(iii) of the 2024 guidelines requires.

Adding or removing a dependant runs through the CGHS authorities in the same way it did in service. A dependant is added on a marriage, a birth, or a parent coming to satisfy the test; a son is deleted when he starts earning, marries, or reaches 25, and the Chief Medical Officer in charge of the Wellness Centre is competent to delete him. Each covered member carries their own beneficiary identification number under the card.

Paragraph F of the Office Memorandum of 27 June 2024 puts a duty on the beneficiary, and attaches a real penalty to ignoring it. A CGHS beneficiary must inform CGHS immediately of any change in the dependency criteria of a family member on the card. Where the beneficiary fails to intimate the change and CGHS discovers it, the CGHS facility is liable to be withdrawn, and CGHS may write to the appropriate authority recommending action under the Service Rules or the Pension Rules. A stale card is therefore a disciplinary exposure, not merely an administrative untidiness.

Income tax on the contribution

The CGHS contribution is deductible in the old regime only, under Section 126(2)(a) of the Income-tax Act 2025, in force from 1 April 2026, which allows a deduction for a contribution made to the Central Government Health Scheme within the Rs. 25,000 ceiling covering the taxpayer, spouse and dependent children. Section 126(8)(a) raises that ceiling to Rs. 50,000 where a senior citizen aged 60 or above is covered, which takes in most pensioners. A pensioner taxed under the new regime claims nothing, because Section 126 is among the deductions the default regime withdraws.

The whole-life card creates a timing problem the annual card does not. The ceiling applies to the year of payment, so a Level 12 retiree who pays Rs. 1,20,000 in one year for a whole-life card and is taxed under the old regime can set off Rs. 50,000 of it at most in that year, and the balance is not carried forward. An annual payer at the Rs. 1,000 slab pays Rs. 12,000 a year, well inside the ceiling, and claims all of it every year. That does not make the annual card the better buy, because the deduction is worth the marginal rate on the amount and the whole-life saving is the contribution itself, but it is a real difference and it is the one point where the annual card wins on tax. The wider position is in income tax for pensioners.

The election at 70: CGHS or Ayushman Vay Vandana

A CGHS pensioner aged 70 or above elects between CGHS and the Ayushman Vay Vandana cover, and cannot hold both. The Union Cabinet decision of 11 September 2024 extended Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana cover of Rs. 5 lakh a year to every citizen aged 70 and above irrespective of income, and provides that a senior citizen already availing CGHS, the Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme or a similar scheme chooses between continuing on the existing scheme and moving to the new one.

For a pensioner holding a whole-life CGHS card the election is usually straightforward, because the two covers are not comparable in what they buy. Ayushman Vay Vandana is a hospitalisation cover of Rs. 5 lakh a year for the household; CGHS gives outpatient consultation, free medicines for chronic conditions, listed investigations and hospitalisation with no annual monetary ceiling. A pensioner who has already paid the whole-life contribution would be surrendering the outpatient half of the benefit, which is the half that recurs every month, in exchange for a capped hospital cover. The election matters most to a pensioner who has not taken a CGHS card and lives outside the CGHS cities.

What the card is worth

The whole-life card repays its price out of outpatient medicines alone within a few years, and everything after that is cover at no further cost. A Level 1 to 5 retiree pays Rs. 30,000 once and a Level 7 to 11 retiree Rs. 78,000; against that stands a chronic condition managed on free monthly medicines for two or three decades, and hospital admissions charged at the CGHS rates notified on 3 October 2025 rather than at open-market prices.

The comparison that decides it for most retirees is not CGHS against nothing but CGHS against a private policy bought at 60. A private policy at that age is priced on the age, excludes what it calls a pre-existing disease for a waiting period, has a sum insured that caps the year, and reimburses hospitalisation while paying nothing for the monthly chemist bill that is the pensioner’s actual recurring cost. The CGHS card is priced on the pay level, has no waiting period, has no annual ceiling, and covers the outpatient half. The premium comparison alone understates the gap.

The case for the annual card is narrow and it is about timing, not about value. A pensioner who is not yet settled, or who cannot find the whole-life amount in the year of retirement while also meeting the costs that cluster there, takes the annual card and converts later on the balance, losing nothing but the immunity from a fresh payment on a transfer between cities in the interval.

Bearing on the 8th Central Pay Commission

The pensioner slabs will change only when the 8th Central Pay Commission reports on the contribution and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issues a fresh order, and neither has happened. The commission was constituted by the Resolution of 3 November 2025 and has not reported, so no revised contribution, no revised whole-life amount and no revised ward threshold exists to be stated.

What can be said is the structure of what will follow. The whole-life amount is defined in the 27 June 2024 order as 120 times the contribution rate at the time of retirement, so a revision of the monthly slabs carries the whole-life amounts with it arithmetically without a separate order. The 2017 precedent also indicates the treatment of existing holders: when the rates were revised on the 7th CPC recommendations, a pensioner already holding a life-time card was not asked for the difference. A pensioner weighing the whole-life card today therefore faces a rate that can rise for future entrants but that has not, on the last revision, been reopened against those who had already paid.

Until an order issues, a pensioner joins on the slabs of the 9 January 2017 order, effective 1 February 2017: Rs. 250, Rs. 450, Rs. 650 or Rs. 1,000 a month by the pay level held at retirement, and 120 times that for a whole-life card.

Related Articles

• Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS)
• CGHS contribution and ward entitlement
• Fixed Medical Allowance
• Reimbursement of medical expenses
• CS(MA) Rules 1944
• Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS)
• Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY
• Central government pension
• Family pension
• Family pension calculation
• Old Pension Scheme
• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• PPO and life certificate
• Pension sanction process and timeline
• Bhavishya
• Provisional pension
• Pension calculation
• Commutation of pension
• Revision of pension
• Qualifying service
• Minimum and maximum pension
• Additional pension in old age
• Dearness relief
• Superannuation
• Retirement age in the central government
• Voluntary retirement
• Retiring pension
• Gratuity for central government employees
• Leave encashment
• Income tax for pensioners
• Income-tax Act 2025
• Section 80D deduction
• New tax regime
• Old versus new tax regime
• Standard deduction
• Pay matrix
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• Central government employees in India

External references

• Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS)
• CGHS beneficiary portal and card services
• Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare
• Bharatkosh payment portal
• DigiLocker
• Pensioners’ Portal

References

1. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Office Memorandum No. S.11012/1/2024-EHS dated 27 June 2024: guidelines for issue of CGHS cards to serving employees and pensioners, including the whole-life contribution table at paragraph B(e), the IPD only card at paragraph B(b), the documents at paragraph B(f), the six-month advance application at paragraph B(g), the electronic card at paragraph C, the Rs. 100 plastic-card fee at paragraph D, and the duty to report a change in dependency at paragraph F.
2. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Office Memorandum No. S.11011/11/2016-CGHS(P)/EHS dated 9 January 2017: CGHS contribution slabs on the 7th CPC recommendations, effective 1 February 2017, and the position of pensioners already holding a life-time card.
3. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Office Memorandum dated 28 October 2022: revised ward entitlement thresholds by basic pay, read with the clarification dated 22 November 2022 on the fresh card required for an upgraded entitlement.
4. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 4/34/2017-P&PW(D) dated 19 July 2017: Fixed Medical Allowance of Rs. 1,000 a month with effect from 1 July 2017.
5. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 4/05/2019-P&PW(D) dated 23 March 2022: procedure and timeline for the change of option between CGHS outpatient care and the Fixed Medical Allowance, and the option to draw the allowance with CGHS for hospitalisation only.
6. CGHS Office Memorandum No. 5-16/CGHS(HQ)/HEC/2024(Part I) dated 3 October 2025: revised CGHS rates and package structure, superseding earlier rate memoranda.
7. Central Government Health Scheme, Frequently Asked Questions: transfer of card ownership to the spouse, the balance payment for a life-time card, and transfer of a card between CGHS cities.
8. Income-tax Act 2025, Sections 126(2)(a) and 126(8)(a): deduction for a contribution to the Central Government Health Scheme, in force from 1 April 2026.
9. Cabinet decision dated 11 September 2024: extension of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana to citizens aged 70 and above, with an election for those already availing CGHS.