Conveyance Allowance

Fixed Conveyance Allowance under SR-25 pays central staff who use their own vehicle for frequent official journeys, on distance slabs from Rs. 1,680 a month.

Updated 17 July 2026 · Reviewed by Salary-Calculator.in

Conveyance Allowance, more precisely the Fixed Conveyance Allowance, is a fixed monthly allowance paid under Supplementary Rule 25 to a central government employee who maintains a personal vehicle and has to undertake frequent journeys on official business in it. It is paid on distance slabs based on the average monthly official travel, with separate rates for a motor car and for other modes, and it is granted under the Department of Expenditure order No. 19039/3/2017-E.IV dated 19 July 2017, with effect from 1 July 2017.

This article explains the allowance in full: what it is and the rule that governs it, who is eligible, the distance-slab rates for a motor car and for other modes and how they have risen with dearness allowance, the important difference between conveyance allowance, transport allowance and travelling allowance that readers most often confuse, the conditions, the income-tax exemption, and the position on pension and the 8th Central Pay Commission.

Conveyance allowance is a narrow, specific allowance, not a general one. It is not the commute allowance every employee draws, and it is not the tour and transfer reimbursement. It is the payment for a doctor who drives to see patients, or an inspector who rides a motorcycle on frequent field visits, keeping and running a personal vehicle for the government’s work, and it is confined to those who genuinely do so.

What it is, and the SR-25 basis

The allowance rests on Supplementary Rule 25, one of the travelling-allowance rules, which provides for a fixed monthly conveyance allowance in place of the mileage or the actual cost of individual journeys, where an employee has to travel extensively on local official duty in a personal conveyance. Rather than have such an employee file a claim for every short official journey, the rule grants a single fixed monthly sum, fixed against the average distance travelled, that meets the running cost of the vehicle used for official work.

The 7th Central Pay Commission reviewed the allowance and the government revised the rates by the Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 19039/3/2017-E.IV dated 19 July 2017, in supersession of the earlier order of 23 September 2008. The conditions and provisions of SR-25 continue to apply, and the revised rates took effect from 1 July 2017. A corrigendum of 13 December 2023 modified the rate for one of the distance slabs.

History and the pay-commission revisions

The Fixed Conveyance Allowance is an old allowance, not a creation of the 7th Central Pay Commission. Supplementary Rule 25 has long provided for a fixed monthly conveyance allowance in place of piecemeal mileage claims, and the allowance has been revised at successive pay commissions to keep the slab rates roughly in step with the cost of running a vehicle. The two features that define it today, the grading by average monthly distance and the separate columns for a motor car and for other modes, are traditional and predate the 7th Central Pay Commission.

The order the 7th Central Pay Commission revision replaced was the Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum of 23 September 2008, issued in the 6th Central Pay Commission round, which had set the previous slab rates. The 19 July 2017 order superseded it and fixed the current base rates, and the corrigendum of 13 December 2023 adjusted one slab. Across these revisions the structure stayed the same; only the rupee figures in the slabs moved. This continuity is why the allowance is still described by its rule number, SR-25, rather than by a pay-commission label: it is a standing rule periodically re-rated, not a scheme reinvented at each commission.

Who is eligible

Conveyance allowance is confined to two broad groups, both defined by actual use of a personal vehicle for frequent official travel:

Doctors, for visits to hospitals and dispensaries outside their normal duty hours and for domiciliary visits to patients. A medical officer who must reach a hospital at odd hours or visit patients at home, in a personal vehicle, is the classic recipient. This sits alongside the other benefits of medical service such as the non-practising allowance , and applies to officers of the Central Health Service and similar cadres.
Other employees who maintain a vehicle for official journeys, that is those who keep their own motor car, scooter, motorcycle or moped and have to undertake frequent journeys on official business in it. Inspectors, surveyors, engineers and field staff whose duties require constant local travel are typical.

Two conditions are essential. The employee must actually maintain the vehicle, so the allowance is not paid to someone who does not own or run one. And the official travel must be frequent and substantial, meeting the minimum average monthly distance the slab requires, so occasional official journeys do not qualify; those are met by the ordinary travelling allowance instead.

The distance-slab rates

The allowance is graded by the average monthly distance travelled on official duty, in two columns: a higher rate for a journey by the employee’s own motor car, and a lower rate for other modes of conveyance such as a scooter or motorcycle. The base rates fixed by the 19 July 2017 order were:

Average monthly official travel	By own motor car	By other modes
Up to 300 km	Rs. 1,680	Rs. 556
301 to 450 km	Rs. 2,520	Rs. 720
451 to 600 km	Rs. 2,980	Rs. 960
601 to 800 km	Rs. 3,646	Rs. 1,126
Above 800 km	Rs. 4,500	Rs. 1,276

These are the base rates. The rate an employee draws depends on the slab their average monthly official travel falls in, and on whether the vehicle is a motor car or another mode. An employee whose duties take them 400 km a month by car draws the second slab, Rs. 2,520 at the base rate; one who does the same distance by scooter draws Rs. 720. The 451 to 600 km motor-car slab was the one adjusted by the corrigendum of 13 December 2023.

How the rates rise with dearness allowance

The escalation of the conveyance allowance is different from that of most allowances, and the difference matters. The order provides that the rates rise automatically by 25 per cent whenever the dearness allowance on the revised pay structure goes up by 50 percentage points. So the allowance moves in a single 25 per cent step at a 50-point dearness allowance threshold, not in small amounts at every dearness allowance revision.

Because dearness allowance crossed 50 per cent in January 2024, the base 2017 rates now stand increased by 25 per cent. Applying that step to the motor-car column, the current rates are Rs. 2,100 for the lowest slab, Rs. 3,150 for the 301 to 450 km slab, Rs. 3,725 for the 451 to 600 km slab, and so on up the table. The next 25 per cent rise will come only when the dearness allowance reaches 100 per cent, which is some years away.

This is a slower, coarser escalation than the transport allowance enjoys, where the whole allowance is multiplied by the current dearness allowance rate and so rises at every revision. The staff side has pressed for the conveyance allowance to be fully indexed to dearness allowance in the same way, so that it keeps pace with running costs, and that demand is one of the items before the 8th Central Pay Commission .

Conveyance, transport and travelling allowance: three different things

The single most common confusion is between conveyance allowance and the two other travel-related payments. They meet three different costs and should never be run together:

Conveyance allowance (SR-25) meets the cost of frequent local travel on official duty in the employee’s own vehicle. It is paid only to those who maintain a vehicle and travel extensively on official work, on the distance slabs above.
Transport allowance meets the cost of the daily commute between home and office. It is paid to almost every employee, at a flat rate by pay level and city, and it rises with every dearness allowance revision. It has nothing to do with official-duty travel.
Travelling allowance meets the cost of an official tour away from headquarters, or a transfer, through the fare, the daily allowance on tour , and on transfer the composite transfer grant and the transport of effects. It is a reimbursement of specific journeys, not a fixed monthly sum.

A single employee can draw more than one of these at once, because they meet different costs: a doctor may draw transport allowance for the commute, conveyance allowance for domiciliary visits, and travelling allowance for an official tour to a conference, all in the same month, without overlap. Keeping the three apart is essential to reading a pay slip correctly.

Conditions and administration

The allowance is fixed and monthly, but it is not unconditional. It is drawn only so long as the employee maintains the vehicle and continues to perform the frequent official travel that justified the slab. If the official travel falls away, or the employee stops maintaining the vehicle, the allowance stops. The controlling officer certifies the extent of official travel, and the slab is fixed on the average monthly distance, so a fall in official travel can move the employee to a lower slab or out of the allowance altogether.

Because it is a fixed monthly sum standing in place of individual journey claims, the employee does not file a bill for each local official trip while drawing it; the fixed allowance is the settlement of those costs. Separate long-distance official tours away from the headquarters station are outside it and are met by the ordinary travelling allowance.

The allowance is also tied to actual attendance and duty, so it is not drawn for a period when the employee is not performing the official travel. Under the SR-25 conditions the conveyance allowance is not admissible during a spell of leave, or a temporary transfer, or joining time, beyond a short period, because no official local travel is being performed then. A recipient who goes on long leave therefore does not draw the allowance for that period, and it resumes when they return to the duty that requires the travel. This keeps the allowance matched to the official journeys it is meant to pay for, rather than running on as a fixed addition to pay regardless of duty.

The income-tax position

The tax treatment follows the purpose of the allowance. A conveyance allowance granted to meet the expenditure on conveyance in the performance of the duties of an office is exempt from income tax under Section 10(14) of the Income-tax Act, read with Rule 2BB, to the extent it is actually spent on official travel. Because the Fixed Conveyance Allowance under SR-25 is by its nature paid for official-duty travel, it is generally exempt to the extent so spent, which is one of the few genuine allowance exemptions that survives under the current law. The section 10(14) exemption is the operative provision.

This should be contrasted with the transport allowance for commuting, whose own income-tax exemption of Rs. 1,600 a month was withdrawn and subsumed into the standard deduction from the assessment year 2019-20, so the commute allowance is now taxable while the standard deduction is given instead. The conveyance allowance for official duty keeps its Section 10(14) exemption because it is not a commute payment.

The exemption is unusually robust because it survives the move to the new tax regime. When the new regime was introduced, the Central Board of Direct Taxes, by Notification No. 38/2020 dated 26 June 2020, listed the few Section 10(14) allowances that continue to be exempt even under the new regime, and the conveyance allowance granted to meet the cost of travel in the performance of official duty is one of them, alongside the travel and transfer allowance and the daily allowance on tour. So a government employee who has opted for the new regime, and lost most other exemptions, still keeps the exemption on the conveyance allowance to the extent it is spent on official travel. The income tax for government employees article sets out how the salary heads and their exemptions combine, and an employee should confirm the treatment of their own conveyance allowance with the drawing and disbursing officer.

Pension and the 8th CPC outlook

Conveyance allowance does not count as emoluments for pension or gratuity, because it is a duty allowance meeting a cost, not a part of pay, and it is not included in the basic pay figure used for house rent allowance or other pay-linked allowances. It affects the take-home pay while it is drawn but leaves the pension untouched.

Whether the 8th Central Pay Commission revises the slab rates, fully indexes the allowance to dearness allowance as the staff side has sought, or restructures it is not known, and no revised figure can be stated as fact until that commission reports and its recommendations are accepted. Until then the position is the SR-25 slab structure above, at the 2017 base rates increased by the single 25 per cent step that the crossing of 50 per cent dearness allowance has triggered.

In force today

The Fixed Conveyance Allowance under SR-25 is paid to central government employees who maintain their own vehicle and undertake frequent official journeys, on distance slabs of average monthly official travel. The 2017 base rates for a motor car run from Rs. 1,680 a month for travel up to 300 km to Rs. 4,500 for travel above 800 km, with lower rates for other modes, and they rise 25 per cent for every 50 percentage points of dearness allowance, so the crossing of 50 per cent dearness allowance in January 2024 has raised the lowest motor-car slab to Rs. 2,100. It is distinct from the transport allowance for commuting and the travelling allowance for tours, and it is exempt from income tax under Section 10(14) to the extent spent on official travel. Governing order: Department of Expenditure OM No. 19039/3/2017-E.IV dated 19 July 2017.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the Conveyance Allowance for central government employees?

The Fixed Conveyance Allowance, granted under Supplementary Rule 25, is a fixed monthly allowance paid to a central government employee who maintains a personal vehicle and has to undertake frequent journeys on official business in it. It is paid on distance slabs based on the average monthly official travel, with separate rates for a motor car and for other modes such as a scooter or motorcycle. It is distinct from the transport allowance, which compensates the home-to-office commute.

What are the rates of Conveyance Allowance?

Under the 7th Central Pay Commission order of 19 July 2017, the base rates for a journey by own motor car ran from Rs. 1,680 a month for average official travel up to 300 km, through Rs. 2,520, Rs. 2,980 and Rs. 3,646, to Rs. 4,500 a month for travel above 800 km. The rates for other modes of conveyance ran from Rs. 556 to Rs. 1,276. These base rates rise by 25 per cent each time the dearness allowance rises by 50 percentage points.

How does Conveyance Allowance rise with dearness allowance?

Unlike the transport allowance, the Conveyance Allowance does not rise with every dearness allowance revision. It increases by a fixed 25 per cent only when the dearness allowance crosses a further 50 percentage points. Because dearness allowance passed 50 per cent in January 2024, the base 2017 rates now stand increased by 25 per cent, so the lowest motor-car slab is Rs. 2,100 a month rather than Rs. 1,680. The next 25 per cent rise will come only when dearness allowance reaches 100 per cent.

How is Conveyance Allowance different from Transport Allowance?

They compensate different journeys. Transport allowance is paid to every eligible employee to meet the cost of commuting between home and office, and it rises with each dearness allowance revision. Conveyance allowance is paid only to those who use their own vehicle for frequent official-duty travel, on distance slabs, and it rises only in 25 per cent steps at 50-point dearness allowance thresholds. An employee can draw both, since they meet different costs.

Who is eligible for Conveyance Allowance?

It is paid to doctors for visits to hospitals and dispensaries outside normal duty hours and for domiciliary visits, and to other employees who maintain their own motor car, scooter, motorcycle or moped and have to undertake frequent journeys on official business in that vehicle. The employee must actually maintain the vehicle and the official travel must be frequent and substantial, meeting the minimum average monthly distance for a slab.

Is Conveyance Allowance taxable?

Conveyance allowance granted to meet the expenditure on conveyance in the performance of official duties is exempt from income tax under Section 10(14) of the Income-tax Act, read with Rule 2BB, to the extent it is actually spent on official travel. Because the Fixed Conveyance Allowance under SR-25 is by its nature for official-duty travel, it is generally exempt to that extent, unlike the transport allowance for commuting, whose separate exemption was subsumed into the standard deduction from 2018-19.

Does Conveyance Allowance count for pension or other allowances?

No. It is a reimbursement-type duty allowance, not part of pay, so it is not reckoned as emoluments for pension or gratuity, and it is not counted in the basic pay figure used for allowances such as house rent allowance. It is paid alongside pay to meet the cost of official travel and stops when the official travel or the eligibility stops.

External references

References

Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Office Memorandum No. 19039/3/2017-E.IV dated 19 July 2017, “Implementation of the recommendations of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, Fixed Conveyance Allowance admissible under SR-25” (revised distance-slab rates for a journey by own motor car and by other modes, effective 1 July 2017, in supersession of the Office Memorandum of 23 September 2008; rates to rise 25 per cent whenever dearness allowance rises by 50 percentage points).
Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Corrigendum dated 13 December 2023 (modification of the Fixed Conveyance Allowance rate for the 451 to 600 km distance slab for a journey by own motor car).
Supplementary Rule 25 of the Fundamental and Supplementary Rules (grant of a fixed monthly conveyance allowance in place of the mileage or actual cost of local official journeys performed in a personal conveyance).
Income-tax Act, 1961, Section 10(14) read with Rule 2BB of the Income-tax Rules (exemption of a conveyance allowance granted to meet the expenditure on conveyance in the performance of official duties, to the extent actually incurred; Central Board of Direct Taxes Notification No. 38/2020 dated 26 June 2020 retains this conveyance-allowance exemption under the new tax regime).
Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, November 2015, chapter on allowances (review and continuation of the Fixed Conveyance Allowance with revised rates).