Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance

Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance is a flat Rs. 180 a month paid to a central government employee who maintains and uses their own cycle for official journeys. The rate was fixed by Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum F. No. 19039/4/2008-E.IV dated 14 July 2017, which revised it from Rs. 90 a month with effect from 1 July 2017, subject to the provisions of Supplementary Rule 25. It does not vary with the pay level, with the distance cycled, or with dearness allowance.

The allowance survived a recommendation to end it. Paragraph 8.15.11 of the Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission held that the amount was meagre and the allowance outdated, and that it should be abolished, and serial 42 of the Commission’s summary table of allowances records the recommendation as “Abolished”. The government declined that recommendation and doubled the rate instead, one of the reversals catalogued in abolished allowances under the 7th CPC.

What the order actually contains is more restrictive than the single rate suggests. Four conditions in paragraph 2 govern admissibility, including a bar on any calendar month wholly covered by leave, training or temporary transfer, and a three-band rule on when travelling allowance may be drawn for the same journey. Paragraph 3 attaches the sanction to the post rather than to the incumbent and caps it at two years at a time.

This article sets out the rate and the order behind it, the four conditions, the leave and temporary-transfer bar read against Supplementary Rules 6, 7-A and 27, the 8 km and 16 km travelling allowance thresholds, the sanction procedure, what the Seventh Central Pay Commission recommended and why the government went the other way, why the rate does not move with dearness allowance, the railway position including a 2023 order recording non-implementation, and the tax treatment. It is a child of the allowances hub.

The rate and the governing order

The Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance is Rs. 180 a month with effect from 1 July 2017. Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum F. No. 19039/4/2008-E.IV dated 14 July 2017, signed by Nirmala Dev, Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, revised the rate “from Rs. 90/- per month to Rs 180/- per month subject to the provisions of SR-25”. Paragraph 4 of the order makes it effective from 1 July 2017, the common effective date for the Seventh Central Pay Commission allowance orders, and paragraph 5 records that it was issued in consultation with the Comptroller and Auditor General of India so far as the Indian Audit and Accounts Department is concerned.

The figure is flat in every direction. It does not scale with basic pay, it does not vary with the kilometres actually covered, and it carries no dearness allowance element. A Level 1 field employee and a Level 4 field employee in the same office, both sanctioned the allowance, draw the identical Rs. 180.

No order since has changed it. The rate has stood for nine years as at August 2026, which is what makes it the standing example of a fixed-rupee allowance that erodes silently while the pay structure around it moves.

What the allowance pays for

The allowance meets the upkeep of a cycle the employee already owns, not its purchase. Paragraph 8.15.10 of the Seventh Central Pay Commission report describes the payment as one made “where the duties attached to the post require extensive use of bicycle and the official concerned has to use and maintain his own cycle for official journeys”. The word maintenance in the name is doing the work: punctures, oiling, a chain, a tyre, the general wear of covering a beat day after day.

Buying the cycle is a separate provision. The Seventh Central Pay Commission report lists a Bicycle Advance of Rs. 4,500 for employees with a grade pay up to Rs. 2,800, recoverable in instalments, which is a loan against the cost of the machine rather than an allowance for its running.

The allowance is therefore a duty payment tied to the use of a conveyance in the performance of the job. It is not a commuting benefit, and it does not attach to the person independently of the work.

Conditions of admissibility

Paragraph 2 of Office Memorandum F. No. 19039/4/2008-E.IV dated 14 July 2017 imposes four conditions, lettered (A) to (D), and all four have to hold.

Condition (A) is the core requirement: “The official concerned maintains and uses his own cycle for official journeys.” Ownership and use both matter. Where the department supplies the cycle, or where the journeys are made by some other means, the condition fails.

Condition (B) regulates travelling allowance for the same journeys and is set out in the next section. Condition (C) bars the allowance for any calendar month wholly covered by leave, training or temporary transfer. Condition (D) bars it for “any period of more than one month at a time” during which the employee does not maintain a cycle, or the cycle maintained “remains out of order or is not used for official journeys for any other reason”.

Condition (D) is the one most often missed in practice, and its threshold is precise. The bar is triggered by a continuous period of more than one month, so a repair lasting a fortnight does not interrupt the drawal, while a cycle left unrepaired for six weeks does.

Leave, training and temporary transfer

The Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance is not admissible for a calendar month wholly covered by leave, training or temporary transfer. That is condition (C) of paragraph 2 of the Office Memorandum of 14 July 2017, and the operative word is “wholly”: a month in which the employee was on duty for even part of the month falls outside the bar.

The general Supplementary Rule is drawn more widely than the order. SR 7-A provides that “A conveyance allowance to which the obligation of maintaining a horse or other animal is not attached is not admissible during leave or temporary transfer or holidays prefixed or suffixed to leave”, which on its own terms would stop the allowance for the days of leave rather than only for whole months. SR 25 permits the competent authority to grant a monthly conveyance allowance “on such conditions as it thinks fit to impose”, and SR 26 opens with the words “Except as otherwise provided in these rules and unless the authority sanctioning it otherwise directs”, so the calendar-month condition in the 2017 order operates as the specific condition attached to this allowance.

Two definitions in SR 6 fix the outer limits. “Leave” for this purpose means the entire leave if it does not exceed four months, and the first four months if it runs longer, and it excludes leave preparatory to retirement. “Temporary transfer” means a transfer to duty at another station expressed to be for a period not exceeding four months, and for this purpose it includes deputation.

Joining time is barred separately. SR 27 provides that a conveyance allowance may not be drawn during joining time or holidays suffixed to joining time. The parallel treatment of the larger conveyance allowance runs on the same rules.

Travelling allowance on a cycle journey

Condition (B) of paragraph 2 of the Office Memorandum of 14 July 2017 sets three distance bands that decide whether an employee drawing the Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance may also claim daily or mileage allowance for a journey. The bands are measured from the usual place of duty.

The middle band carries the condition that decides most disputes. Where the destination lies outside the local jurisdiction but within 16 km, travelling allowance is admissible only if the journey was made by some means other than the cycle. An employee who cycles to that destination draws the monthly allowance and nothing more.

The local jurisdiction is not fixed by the order. Paragraph 3 empowers the sanctioning authority to “specify whenever necessary the local jurisdiction of a Government servant at the time of sanctioning the allowance”, so the second and third bands turn on a limit the sanctioning authority sets case by case.

This scheme is specific to the cycle. The general bar in the proviso to SR 26 stops an employee drawing a conveyance allowance granted for the upkeep of a motor car or motor cycle from claiming mileage or daily allowance for a journey by that vehicle, and says nothing about a bicycle; the 8 km and 16 km bands in the 2017 order fill that gap for this allowance. The daily allowance on tour and mileage allowance rules govern what is payable once the distance thresholds are crossed.

Sanction, the two-year limit and review by post

The allowance attaches to the post, not to the person holding it. Paragraph 3 of the Office Memorandum of 14 July 2017 directs that “The Allowance may be sanctioned with reference to the posts and not to the individual incumbents”, and requires the sanctioning authority to “make a review of the posts under their control and decide the posts for which the Cycle (maintenance) Allowance should be sanctioned”.

The sanction is time-limited. The same paragraph provides that the allowance “shall be granted by the sanctioning authority for a period not exceeding two years at a time and its continuance shall be reviewed sufficiently in advance of the expiry of such period”. A sanction that is allowed to lapse without review stops the payment, and the review is the authority’s duty rather than the employee’s.

The practical consequence is that two employees doing similar work in different offices can be treated differently without any irregularity, because the sanctioning authority in one has identified the post as a cycle post and the authority in the other has not.

The Seventh Central Pay Commission recommendation to abolish

The Seventh Central Pay Commission recommended abolishing the Cycle Allowance. Paragraph 8.15.11 of its report states: “The Commission is of the view that amount of this allowance is meagre and the allowance itself is outdated. Hence, it should be abolished.” Serial 42 of the Commission’s summary table of allowances records the recommendation in a single word, “Abolished”.

The Commission recorded no opposition to keeping it. Paragraph 8.15.10, which describes the allowance and puts the existing rate at Rs. 90 a month, closes with the sentence “No demands regarding Cycle Allowance have been received.” The recommendation was made on the Commission’s own assessment of the amount, not in response to a representation.

The government declined the recommendation and doubled the rate. Neither of the Commission’s two standard multipliers was used. Paragraph 8.2.5 of the report explains that allowances of a fixed amount not indexed to dearness allowance “have generally been raised by a factor of 2.25”, and those partially indexed by a factor of 1.5. A factor of 2.25 on Rs. 90 would have produced Rs. 202.50. The government instead applied a plain factor of 2 and landed on the round Rs. 180.

Why the rate does not move with dearness allowance

The Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance carries no dearness allowance indexation and no 25% step. Office Memorandum F. No. 19039/4/2008-E.IV dated 14 July 2017 runs to five paragraphs and contains no escalation clause of any kind: it fixes Rs. 180 a month and stops there.

The contrast with the neighbouring order in the same file series is exact. Paragraph 2 of Office Memorandum No. 19039/3/2017-E.IV dated 19 July 2017, which governs the fixed conveyance allowance, provides that “These rates shall automatically increase by 25% whenever the Dearness Allowance payable on the revised pay structure goes up by 50%”. Dearness allowance reached 50% on 1 January 2024 and triggered that step for the conveyance allowance. It did nothing at all to the cycle allowance.

Paragraph 8.2.5 of the Seventh Central Pay Commission report sets out the four ways an allowance is administered: fully indexed to dearness allowance, of which transport allowance is the example; partially indexed, meaning the amount rises 25% each time dearness allowance rises 50%, of which Field Area Allowance and Siachen Allowance are the examples; not indexed at all, so that the amount does not change with dearness allowance; and percentage-based, of which house rent allowance is the example. The Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance sits in the third category.

Dearness allowance has since risen to 60% of basic pay from 1 January 2026, and the cycle allowance is still Rs. 180. Only a fresh order of the Department of Expenditure will move it.

Cycle, conveyance and transport allowance compared

Three allowances are routinely confused because all three involve travel, and they differ on the payer’s purpose, the base, the current figure and the way the figure moves.

Two of the three are duty allowances and one is not. The Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance and the conveyance allowance are both granted under SR-25 for a conveyance used in the performance of duty; the transport allowance is a commuting payment and is unaffected by how the employee travels. A field employee may draw the cycle allowance and the transport allowance in the same month.

Separate again is the fixed travelling allowance, a consolidated monthly travelling allowance paid to certain touring staff in place of claiming journey by journey. It answers the touring, while the cycle allowance answers the upkeep of the machine, so the combination admissible in a given post depends on what the department’s rules for that post provide.

The orders superseded on 1 July 2017

Office Memorandum F. No. 19039/4/2008-E.IV dated 14 July 2017 was issued “in supersession of this Department o.M.No. F. 11(18)-E.IV(B)/62 dated 31st August, 1962 including all its amendments thereafter and O.M. No.19039/3/2008-E.IV dated 29th August, 2008”. Both instruments ceased to operate from 1 July 2017.

The 1962 order is the origin of the modern central rule on this allowance, and the fact that the 2017 order had to supersede “all its amendments thereafter” indicates a fifty-five year accretion of amending instructions that the single new order replaced.

The 2008 order is the Sixth Central Pay Commission revision. What it left in place is on the record in the Seventh Central Pay Commission report: paragraph 8.15.10 puts the existing rate at Rs. 90 a month, which is the figure the 2017 order doubled.

Railway employees and the re-circulation of 2023

Railway employees draw the same Rs. 180 a month under a parallel Railway Board order. Letter No. F(E)I/2017/AL-7/1 dated 11 August 2017, circulated as RBE No. 93/2017, applied the revised rate from 1 July 2017 under Rule 1606 of the Indian Railway Establishment Code Volume II, 2005 edition, and superseded Board’s letter No. F(E)I/2008/AL-7/2 dated 18 September 2008, RBE No. 115/2008. The conditions reproduce the Department of Expenditure order, including the calendar-month bar, the one-month rule for a cycle out of order, the two-year sanction and the 8 km and 16 km travelling allowance thresholds.

Six years later the Board had to issue the instructions again. Letter No. F(E)I/2023/AL-7/1 dated 16 March 2023, circulated as RBE No. 44/2023 and PC-VII No. 205 and signed by Jitendra Kumar, Deputy Director Finance (Estt.)I, records: “It has been brought to notice of Board that Board’s instructions regarding grant of Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance are not being followed / have not been implemented by some of the Railways/ Divisions.” The instructions in the 2017 letter were re-circulated “for information/compliance” and receipt was directed to be acknowledged.

That order is the clearest documented evidence of the practical problem with this allowance. The entitlement was not in doubt and the rate was not in dispute; the payment simply was not being made in some divisions, and it took a Railway Board circular to restart it. An employee in a cycle post who has never seen the allowance on a pay slip is describing the situation RBE No. 44/2023 was issued to correct.

Who draws it in practice

The allowance is drawn by field and touring staff in posts a sanctioning authority has identified, and in practice that has meant Group C employees whose work is a round of visits across a local area. Postmen, revenue and excise field staff, land-records and survey staff, process servers, meter readers and beat-based inspectors are the usual categories. Since paragraph 3 of the 2017 order attaches the sanction to the post, the list is not fixed centrally: each authority decides which of its posts qualify.

The reach has narrowed because the work has changed. Field touring that was done on a bicycle is now often done on a motorcycle or a moped, in a departmental vehicle, or not at all where records and services have moved online. A meter reader with a handheld device on a two-wheeler is not the employee paragraph 8.15.10 describes, and the applicable allowance for a motor vehicle used on duty is the conveyance allowance, not this one.

That narrowing is the substance behind the Commission’s word “outdated” at paragraph 8.15.11. It is also why the amount looks the way it does: Rs. 180 a month is Rs. 2,160 a year, small against a pay slip and not small against the cost of a chain and two tyres.

Income tax

The Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance is exempt to the extent the amount is actually spent on the conveyance used in the performance of duty, and the exemption survives the default regime. For the tax year 2026-27 the prescribed-allowance exemptions sit in the Table in Schedule III to the Income-tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 30 of 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. Rule 280 of those Rules prescribes the allowances, and an allowance granted to meet the expenditure incurred on conveyance in the performance of duties is one of the short list a person taxed under Section 202, the default regime, keeps.

The return for the financial year 2025-26 runs on the repealed law. There the exemption is Section 10(14)(i) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 read with Rule 2BB(1)(c) of the Income-tax Rules, 1962, in the same terms.

The practical effect is negligible either way at Rs. 180 a month, but the classification is not. Treating the allowance as ordinary taxable pay would also imply it counts towards the salary figure that other computations run on, which it does not. For how allowances feed into the salary computation and the regime choice, see income tax for government employees and old versus new tax regime.

Pension and other emoluments

The Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance is not reckoned as emoluments for pension or retirement gratuity. It is a compensatory allowance meeting the running cost of a conveyance used on duty, not a part of pay, so it falls outside the emoluments definition that fixes the pension of a retiring employee under central government pension.

It also does not enter any of the figures computed on basic pay. Dearness allowance, house rent allowance and the employee and employer contributions under the National Pension System are all worked out on basic pay drawn from the pay matrix cell, and the Rs. 180 sits outside that base.

The allowance affects take-home pay while it is drawn and stops with the duty that justified it. An employee transferred out of a cycle post loses it from the sanction attached to the new post, not from any separate order.

Bearing on the 8th Central Pay Commission

No post-8th-CPC figure for the Cycle (Maintenance) Allowance can be stated. The 8th Central Pay Commission has not reported, and until it does and the government accepts its recommendations, the position is a flat Rs. 180 a month under Office Memorandum F. No. 19039/4/2008-E.IV dated 14 July 2017.

What is on the record is how the last review went. The Seventh Central Pay Commission recommended abolition at paragraph 8.15.11 on the ground that the amount was meagre and the allowance outdated, and recorded at paragraph 8.15.10 that no demands about the allowance had been received. The government declined the recommendation and doubled the rate. An allowance recommended for abolition once, saved by a government decision, and then left at the same rupee figure for nine years while dearness allowance moved from 4% to 60% is an obvious candidate for the same question to be asked again.

The one thing the record does not support is an assumption that the Eighth Commission will simply carry the figure forward. Rs. 180 in 2026 buys materially less upkeep than Rs. 180 did in July 2017, and the only mechanism that can change it is a fresh order.

Related Articles

• Allowances for central government employees
• Conveyance allowance
• Transport allowance
• Travelling allowance (TA)
• Fixed travelling allowance
• Daily allowance on tour
• Mileage allowance
• Running allowance
• Washing allowance
• Cash Handling and Treasury Allowance
• Split duty allowance
• Overtime allowance
• Abolished allowances under the 7th CPC
• Dearness allowance
• House rent allowance
• Postman salary
• MTS salary
• Income tax for government employees
• Income-tax Act 2025
• Old versus new tax regime
• Section 115BAC (default new regime)
• Take-home salary for central government employees
• Central government pension
• National Pension System
• Department of Expenditure
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• Central government employees in India
• Basic pay
• Pay matrix
• Salary by pay level
• 7th CPC salary calculator

External references

• Department of Expenditure: Cycle (maintenance) Allowance, implementation of 7th CPC recommendations
• Office Memorandum F. No. 19039/4/2008-E.IV dated 14 July 2017 (PDF)
• Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (PDF)
• Railway Board RBE No. 44/2023 dated 16 March 2023 (PDF)
• Department of Expenditure: orders and circulars
• Income Tax Department

References

1. Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Office Memorandum F. No. 19039/4/2008-E.IV dated 14 July 2017: revision of the rate of Cycle (maintenance) Allowance from Rs. 90 to Rs. 180 a month with effect from 1 July 2017, subject to the provisions of SR-25, with the four conditions of admissibility in paragraph 2 and the sanction procedure in paragraph 3.
2. Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. F. 11(18)-E.IV(B)/62 dated 31 August 1962 and Office Memorandum No. 19039/3/2008-E.IV dated 29 August 2008, both superseded by the order of 14 July 2017.
3. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (November 2015), paragraphs 8.15.10 and 8.15.11 (Cycle Allowance), paragraph 8.2.5 (the four ways an allowance is administered and the 2.25 and 1.5 multipliers), and serial 42 of the summary table of allowances.
4. Supplementary Rules 6, 7-A, 25, 26 and 27 (definitions of leave and temporary transfer, admissibility of a conveyance allowance during leave and joining time, and the grant of a monthly conveyance allowance).
5. Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Office Memorandum No. 19039/3/2017-E.IV dated 19 July 2017, paragraph 2 (fixed conveyance allowance, automatic 25% increase whenever dearness allowance goes up by 50%).
6. Railway Board letter No. F(E)I/2017/AL-7/1 dated 11 August 2017 (RBE No. 93/2017) and letter No. F(E)I/2023/AL-7/1 dated 16 March 2023 (RBE No. 44/2023, PC-VII No. 205), re-circulating the instructions on non-implementation by some Railways and Divisions.
7. Income-tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 30 of 2025), Schedule III (prescribed allowances) and Section 202 (the default regime); Central Board of Direct Taxes Notification No. 22/2026, G.S.R. 198(E), dated 20 March 2026 notifying the Income-tax Rules, 2026, rule 280; and Section 10(14)(i) of the repealed Income-tax Act, 1961 read with Rule 2BB(1)(c) of the Income-tax Rules, 1962 for the financial year 2025-26.