Field Area Allowance

The Field Area Allowance is the graded allowance paid for field and operational service, in three tiers set by the severity of the area: Modified Field Area for the least severe, Field Area for the middle and Highly Active Field Area for the most severe. Paragraph 8.10.18 of the 7th Central Pay Commission report defines it as a generic term for the allowance granted to Defence, Central Armed Police Forces and Indian Coast Guard personnel while deployed in areas so classified. Since 1 January 2024 the three tiers pay Rs. 21,125, Rs. 13,125 and Rs. 7,875 a month at Level 9 and above, and Rs. 12,125, Rs. 7,500 and Rs. 4,500 at Level 8 and below.

Those figures are cell rates. The 7th CPC folded the field tiers into the Risk and Hardship matrix, placing Highly Active Field Area Allowance in cell R1H2 at paragraph 8.10.69 and Field Area Allowance in cell R2H2 at paragraph 8.10.72, and fixing the Modified tier at 60% of the R2H2 rate rather than giving it a cell of its own. The rates were notified for the armed forces by Ministry of Defence letter No. 1(16)/2017/D(Pay/Services) dated 18 September 2017 with effect from 1 July 2017, and every one of them rises 25% each time dearness allowance rises by 50 percentage points.

The allowance attaches to the deployment and not to the rank. It begins when a person is posted into an area the administering ministry has classified, is drawn on top of pay and Military Service Pay for the length of the tenure, stops for the whole of any leave of more than 30 days taken at a stretch, and stops altogether on posting away. It counts for nothing in pension, gratuity or the National Pension System contribution base, and it is exempt from income tax only up to Rs. 4,200, Rs. 2,600 and Rs. 1,000 a month by tier, and only in the old regime.

This article sets out the rate table and the escalator, the definitions the classifying authority applies, who classifies an area and who draws the allowance, the derived Modified tier, the Border Out Post rule, the leave and concurrency conditions, the counter-insurgency pairing, the rank-wise rates the matrix replaced, and the pension and tax position. It is a child of the allowances hub, and the cell rates are reconciled against the site’s risk and hardship allowance reference.

Rates by tier and pay band

Since 1 January 2024 the Highly Active Field Area Allowance is Rs. 21,125 a month at Level 9 and above and Rs. 12,125 at Level 8 and below, the Field Area Allowance is Rs. 13,125 and Rs. 7,500, and the Modified Field Area Allowance is Rs. 7,875 and Rs. 4,500. The base rates, notified with effect from 1 July 2017 by Ministry of Defence letter No. 1(16)/2017/D(Pay/Services) dated 18 September 2017, and the current figures after the first 25% enhancement of the matrix, are these:

Within a tier the amount turns on one question only, whether the person is at Level 9 and above or at Level 8 and below in the pay matrix. A Sepoy and a Havildar deployed to the same field area draw the same Rs. 7,500 a month, and a Major and a Lieutenant Colonel in that area draw the same Rs. 13,125. That is the 7th CPC’s deliberate replacement of seven rank slabs per tier with two pay bands per cell, and it is why a rank-wise field allowance table no longer exists.

The step between tiers is the whole point of the design. Moving a unit from a field area to a highly active field area lifts a jawan from Rs. 7,500 to Rs. 12,125 a month, an increase of Rs. 4,625, and lifts an officer from Rs. 13,125 to Rs. 21,125. Moving the other way, to a modified field area, drops the jawan to Rs. 4,500.

Definitions the classifying authority applies

Paragraph 8.10.18 of the 7th Central Pay Commission report defines each of the three tiers, and those definitions are the test the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Home Affairs apply when they classify a place. A Highly Active Field Area is one “where grave danger exists to troops, airmen, fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters due to deployment in close proximity of enemy”. A Field Area is one “where troops are deployed near the borders for operational considerations, and where hostilities and risk to life are imminent”. A Modified Field Area is one “where defence personnel/isolated detachments are deployed/stationed/mobilized in support of military duties and where imminence of hostilities/violence and risk exist”, and the same paragraph adds that such areas “may have severe infrastructural deficiencies causing deprivation and/or mental strain”.

Three things follow from the wording. Proximity to the enemy, not terrain or remoteness, separates the top tier from the middle one. The middle tier turns on imminence, which is why a border deployment qualifies without any hostilities having begun. And the bottom tier is the only one of the three that names infrastructure and mental strain, which is how an isolated detachment far from any border can still draw the allowance.

The definitions are conditions of the area, not of the individual. A person deployed into a highly active field area draws Rs. 12,125 or Rs. 21,125 a month whatever their trade or appointment, because the classification of the place, not the content of the duty, sets the tier.

Classification authority and review

The Ministry of Defence classifies areas for defence personnel and the Ministry of Home Affairs classifies them for the Central Armed Police Forces. That split was a Government decision taken against the Commission’s advice. Paragraph 8.10.72 of the 7th CPC report records a demand from the paramilitary forces that field areas be classified jointly and accepts it:

There is a strong demand from CAPFs that the classification of Field Areas into Highly Active, Field or Modified, which is presently done by Ministry of Defence, should be done jointly by Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Home Affairs for places where CAPFs are deployed. The Commission finds the demand reasonable after taking into account the first-hand experience during its visits at various places.

The Department of Expenditure press note recording the Cabinet decision of 28 June 2017 declined that recommendation, stating at item 7(v) that classification of field areas for this allowance will be done by the Ministry of Defence for Defence personnel and by the Ministry of Home Affairs for the Central Armed Police Forces. What the Ministry of Home Affairs then set up, at paragraph 8 of Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017, was a committee under the chairmanship of the Union Home Secretary for classification of field areas for the paramilitary forces. That is a second unilateral exercise, not the joint body the Commission asked for.

Classification is reviewed rather than fixed. The Union Home Secretary’s committee issued its first revision by Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/2017-PF(Pt.II) dated 22 February 2019, reclassifying areas in Jammu and Kashmir and in the Left Wing Extremism districts, which the Central Reserve Police Force circulated on 8 March 2019. For a specific posting the authoritative answer is therefore the current classification order of the administering ministry, and a tier drawn last year is not proof of the tier drawn this year.

Forces and ranks covered

Paragraph 8.10.18 of the 7th CPC report extends the field area allowances to three sets of personnel: Defence, the Central Armed Police Forces and the Indian Coast Guard. The matrix pays all three at the same cell rate for the same classified area, which is the point of a common grid: a jawan and a Central Reserve Police Force trooper deployed on the same operation in the same field area each draw Rs. 7,500 a month at Level 8 and below.

For the Central Armed Police Forces the Ministry of Home Affairs restricted the matrix by rank. Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017 applies it up to the rank of Commandant in field units, so an officer above that rank does not draw a matrix allowance for a field posting. There is no equivalent rank ceiling on the defence side, where the two pay bands run the length of the defence pay matrix.

The allowance follows the deployment for every one of the three forces. A CAPF constable posted from a peace station into a classified field area starts drawing it from the date of the move and stops on return, and the same rule governs a Coast Guard detachment and an army unit.

The dearness-allowance escalator

Every field area rate rises by 25% each time dearness allowance rises by 50 percentage points. Paragraph 8.10.66 of the 7th Central Pay Commission report states the rule for the whole matrix: “The rates in each cell are in the nature of Rupees per month. The rates will increase further by 25 percent each time DA rises by 50 percent.” The Department of Expenditure Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017 notified the cell rates on that basis, and Ministry of Defence letter No. 1(16)/2017/D(Pay/Services) dated 18 September 2017 carried the same escalator into the armed forces orders.

One step has been taken. Dearness allowance reached 50% of basic pay with effect from 1 January 2024, which lifted Highly Active Field Area Allowance from Rs. 16,900 and Rs. 9,700 to Rs. 21,125 and Rs. 12,125, Field Area Allowance from Rs. 10,500 and Rs. 6,000 to Rs. 13,125 and Rs. 7,500, and the derived Modified Field Area Allowance from Rs. 6,300 and Rs. 3,600 to Rs. 7,875 and Rs. 4,500.

The next step is some distance away. Dearness allowance stands at 60% of basic pay from 1 January 2026, which is past the 50-point trigger already used and short of the 100-point one, so the field area rates do not move again until dearness allowance reaches 100%. The escalator works in whole 50-point blocks, which is why the rates were unchanged through every intervening dearness allowance revision, and why a field allowance figure quoted from a dearness allowance order rather than from the matrix is wrong.

The Modified Field Area Allowance as a derived rate

Modified Field Area Allowance is not a cell of the Risk and Hardship matrix. Paragraph 8.10.72 of the 7th CPC report fixes it as a percentage of one: the allowance, “which is currently at the level of 40 percent of Field Area Allowance, will now be paid at 60 percent of Field Area Allowance, or 60 percent of the rate of this cell”. The cell is R2H2, so the Modified tier is 60% of Rs. 10,500 and Rs. 6,000 at the base, which Appendix A of the Ministry of Defence letter of 18 September 2017 prints as Rs. 6,300 a month for officers and Rs. 3,600 for junior commissioned officers and other ranks.

The derived rate moves with its parent. When the 25% enhancement lifted cell R2H2 to Rs. 13,125 and Rs. 7,500 from 1 January 2024, the Modified tier went to Rs. 7,875 and Rs. 4,500, being 60% of those figures. No separate order was needed for the Modified tier, because the percentage and not the amount is what the recommendation fixed.

The raise from 40% to 60% was itself a real increase, worth half as much again to a person in a modified field area. Against the pre-2016 rates at paragraph 8.10.19, where a Sepoy in a modified field area drew Rs. 1,200 a month, the current Rs. 4,500 is a multiple of 3.75, of which the shift in the percentage accounts for a part and the 1.5 factor and the 25% enhancement for the rest.

Border Out Posts and the air-maintained enhancement

A Border Out Post is treated as a Field Area, which means the R2H2 rate of Rs. 13,125 and Rs. 7,500 a month since 1 January 2024. Paragraph 8.10.72 of the 7th CPC report provides that “Border Out Posts (BOPs) should be treated as Field Area for the purposes of Risk and Hardship Allowance”, so the classification question does not arise separately for a Border Out Post.

The same paragraph carries the only upward derivation in the chapter: “allowance at air-maintained BOPs that require a foot march of five days or more should be enhanced by further 25 percent”. On the current R2H2 figures that enhancement works out to Rs. 16,406.25 a month at Level 9 and above and Rs. 9,375 at Level 8 and below. Two conditions must both hold, air maintenance and a foot march of five days or more, so a Border Out Post reachable by road draws the ordinary field area rate however remote it is.

Effect of leave of more than 30 days

Leave of more than 30 days taken at a stretch stops the allowance for the whole period of that leave. Paragraph 8.10.72 of the 7th CPC report records that Highly Active Field Area, Field Area and Modified Field Area Allowance were stopped where an employee proceeded on leave for more than fifteen days, and recommends that “this ceiling should be raised from fifteen days to thirty days”. The rule began as a field area provision and then spread across the matrix.

The Ministry of Home Affairs applied the same 30-day test to all Risk and Hardship Allowances for the Central Armed Police Forces by a clarification of 13 September 2019, holding that its Office Memorandum of 31 July 2017 contains no calendar-month condition and that leave of any kind exceeding 30 days makes the person ineligible for the period. The Ministry of Defence adopted the identical position for defence civilian fire-fighting staff in 2020, and the Central Reserve Police Force circularised recovery in October 2020 with the clarification that the bar bites only where more than 30 days is availed at a stretch.

The arithmetic is unforgiving at the top tier. A jawan in a highly active field area who takes 31 days of leave at a stretch loses the whole Rs. 12,125 for that period rather than a proportionate part of it, while the same jawan taking 29 days loses nothing. Leave of under 30 days is not counted at all.

Concurrency with other matrix allowances

Nothing in the matrix permits or bars drawing two matrix allowances at once, so the pre-2016 concurrency instructions of the administering ministry continue to decide each pair. Paragraph 8.10.78 of the 7th CPC report leaves the question where it was: “Concurrent admissibility of allowances, applicable to Defence personnel, shall remain unaltered and its applicability should be extended mutatis mutandis to CAPF personnel posted in field areas.” Read with the rule at paragraph 8.10.66 that each allowance keeps its own conditions of admissibility, the effect is that the field area allowances carry every pre-2016 condition into the matrix era, and only the amount changed in 2017.

Those instructions are not uniform, so the answer differs by pair. Siachen Allowance is admissible in addition to Compensatory Field Area Allowance, but not alongside High Altitude Allowance. High Altitude Allowance is admissible with Compensatory Field Area Allowance where its own conditions are met. Central Armed Police Forces personnel elect between a matrix allowance and Detachment Allowance rather than drawing both.

The counter-insurgency pairing

Counter-Insurgency Operations Allowance is paid at the field area cell rates, not at rates of its own. Paragraph 8.10.69 of the 7th CPC report placed the allowance for field areas in cell R1H2 alongside Highly Active Field Area Allowance and raised it from 93% of that allowance to 100%, “having regard to the importance of Counter Insurgency Operations in view of the threat of Left Wing Extremism”, which is why the two now share a rate of Rs. 21,125 and Rs. 12,125 a month rather than sitting a few hundred rupees apart. Paragraph 8.10.72 placed the allowance in peace areas in cell R2H2 with Field Area Allowance, at Rs. 13,125 and Rs. 7,500.

The third case is derived rather than placed. Paragraph 8.10.69 records that Counter-Insurgency Operations Allowance in modified field areas “is presently 77 percent of CI Ops Allowance in Field Areas” and recommends that the percentage be retained, so it is 77% of the R1H2 rate. Appendix A of Ministry of Defence letter No. 1(16)/2017/D(Pay/Services) dated 18 September 2017 prints the result as Rs. 13,013 a month for officers and Rs. 7,469 for junior commissioned officers and other ranks at the base, which became Rs. 16,266.25 and Rs. 9,336.25 from 1 January 2024.

A person deployed on counter-insurgency operations in a classified field area therefore draws at the top of the field structure. The counter-insurgency operations allowance is the same matrix rate approached from the operational side, which is why the 7th CPC discussed the two together in the same two paragraphs rather than in separate schemes.

Rank-wise rates before the 7th CPC

Before 1 July 2017 the field area allowances were rank-wise, with seven slabs in each of the three tiers. Paragraph 8.10.19 of the 7th Central Pay Commission report records the rates then in force:

The Commission compressed that grid twice over. Twenty-one rates became six, because seven rank slabs per tier became two pay bands per cell, and the arithmetic was mechanical: paragraphs 8.10.69 and 8.10.72 state that the R1H2 and R2H2 rates were arrived at by averaging the existing rates of Highly Active Field Area Allowance and Field Area Allowance above and below Grade Pay 5400 and then applying a factor of 1.5.

The other change was structural. A rank-wise allowance revised on its own schedule became a cell of a common matrix escalated with dearness allowance, so the field area rates now move on the same trigger as the flying, submarine and high-altitude allowances rather than waiting for a separate revision. A Sepoy who drew Rs. 3,000 a month in a field area before 2017 draws Rs. 7,500 today, and the increase came in two documented steps: the 1.5 factor applied to the averaged rate in 2017, and the 25% enhancement from 1 January 2024.

Position in the matrix order of severity

The field area allowances sit in the middle of the Risk and Hardship matrix, not at its top. Above them are RH-Max, which holds Siachen Allowance at Rs. 42,500 and Rs. 30,000 a month, and cell R1H1 at Rs. 31,250 and Rs. 21,625, which holds flying allowance, the Special Forces, the submariners, the MARCOS and CoBRA commandos and the most severe high altitude category. Highly Active Field Area Allowance in R1H2 at Rs. 21,125 is the next rung down, and Field Area Allowance in R2H2 at Rs. 13,125 the one after.

Below the field tiers are the lower-risk duties: the Tough Location Allowances that replaced the older remote-locality, hill and bad-climate allowances, the middle and lower High Altitude categories, and the mild duties at the floor of the matrix, where cell R3H3 pays Rs. 1,250 a month. The special duty allowance for North East, Ladakh and island postings sits outside the matrix altogether, being a percentage of basic pay rather than a flat cell rate.

The ranking is the Commission’s judgement about the kind of risk being compensated. Flying and glacier duty carry acute, momentary risk; field service carries sustained exposure and hardship over a tenure. The three field tiers then rank the field postings among themselves, which is what makes the allowance graded rather than flat.

Comparison with Military Service Pay and dearness allowance

The three payments a deployed soldier sees on the same pay slip work in different ways, and only one of them counts for pension:

Military Service Pay is a pay element, so it enters emoluments, attracts dearness allowance and feeds the pension. The Field Area Allowance is a duty allowance that does none of those three things. A soldier in a highly active field area draws Military Service Pay for being in the forces and Rs. 12,125 or Rs. 21,125 a month for the deployment, and the second stops the day the posting ends.

Field tenure and separation from family

A field area posting is one a family cannot follow. A classified field area is an operational location, generally without the family accommodation, schools and medical facilities of a peace station, so a person deployed there is commonly separated from their family for the length of the tenure while the family stays at a peace station or a home town. Paragraph 8.10.18 of the 7th CPC report names infrastructural deficiencies “causing deprivation and/or mental strain” as a mark of a modified field area, which is the closest the definitions come to naming this cost.

The allowance is not framed as a separation allowance, and it compensates the deployment as a whole rather than the separation within it. That framing is why the payment tracks the posting exactly, starting on deployment into the classified area and stopping on return to a peace station, and why 31 days of leave taken at a stretch stops it: the payment answers presence in the field, and the separation ends when the presence does.

Worked examples

A Sepoy at Level 3 deployed to an ordinary field area draws Rs. 7,500 a month as Field Area Allowance, on top of basic pay, Military Service Pay of Rs. 5,200 and dearness allowance at 60% of the reckonable pay. Move the same Sepoy to a highly active field area and the allowance rises to Rs. 12,125, an increase of Rs. 4,625 a month with no change in rank, pay level or trade.

A Major at Level 11 in the same two areas draws Rs. 13,125 and Rs. 21,125 respectively, with Military Service Pay of Rs. 15,500 alongside. In a modified field area the same officer draws Rs. 7,875, being 60% of the R2H2 rate under paragraph 8.10.72.

Two figures show the limits of the allowance. Over a twelve-month tenure in a highly active field area the Sepoy receives Rs. 1,45,500, and none of it enters the pension calculation, because Rule 31 of the CCS (Pension) Rules 2021 counts only basic pay. And if that Sepoy takes 31 days of leave at a stretch during the tenure, the whole month’s Rs. 12,125 is stopped rather than reduced.

Effect on pension, gratuity and NPS contributions

The Field Area Allowance adds nothing to pension. Rule 31 of the CCS (Pension) Rules 2021 defines emoluments as the basic pay drawn immediately before retirement or death, plus non-practising allowance granted to a medical officer in lieu of private practice, with stagnation increment added by the Explanation. No other allowance enters, and rule 32 computes average emoluments over the last ten months on the same basis. A duty allowance paid at a matrix cell rate is outside that definition however long it has been drawn.

Retirement gratuity adds one item and one only to that figure, the dearness allowance admissible on the date of retirement or death. A field area allowance drawn for a full career on the frontier is not added.

The National Pension System contribution base is drawn just as tightly. Rule 5(1) of the CCS (Implementation of National Pension System) Rules 2021, notified by G.S.R. 227(E) dated 30 March 2021, limits it to “basic pay as defined in rule 9(21)(a)(i) of the Fundamental Rules, 1922, non-practicing allowance granted to medical officer in lieu of private practice and admissible dearness allowance in a calendar month”, and the Unified Pension Scheme operates on the same base.

Stated in cash, a jawan who drew Highly Active Field Area Allowance at Rs. 12,125 a month across twenty years of a career took home about Rs. 29 lakh that produced no pension value at all. Every rupee of the pension comes from the basic pay of the level, which is why the pay level and not the posting decides the retirement outcome.

Tax treatment

The Field Area Allowance is fully taxable under the default new regime and exempt only up to small capped amounts under the old one. For the tax year 2026-27 the governing law is the Income-tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 30 of 2025), in force from 1 April 2026, whose Section 202 carries the default regime formerly in Section 115BAC and whose Schedule III carries the prescribed-allowance exemptions formerly in Section 10(14). The subordinate rules are 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.

The caps below are cited in their pre-2026 numbering, Rule 2BB(2) of the repealed Income-tax Rules 1962, because that is the numbering the orders and the assessment practice use; the entries and the amounts carry into the Schedule III scheme unchanged:

A proviso bars double counting: an assessee claiming serial number 7 or 8 cannot also claim the border area and remote locality exemption at serial number 2.

The caps have been overtaken by the allowances they were written for, because they were fixed long before the 7th CPC and were not revised when the matrix multiplied the underlying amounts by 1.5 and then by a further 25%. A jawan drawing Highly Active Field Area Allowance at Rs. 12,125 a month has Rs. 4,200 exempt, about 35% of it. An officer drawing Field Area Allowance at Rs. 13,125 has Rs. 2,600 exempt, under 20%. In a modified field area the Rs. 1,000 cap covers about 22% of a jawan’s Rs. 4,500.

Under the default regime none of the three survives. The restriction is unchanged in substance from Rule 2BB(3) as substituted by Notification 43/2023: a new-regime assessee keeps only the travel, daily and conveyance allowances and the transport allowance for a disabled employee, and no risk or hardship entry is among them. For the regime comparison see old versus new tax regime and income tax for government employees.

Bearing on the 8th Central Pay Commission

No rate for the field area allowances under the 8th Central Pay Commission exists, because that Commission has not reported. Any figure circulating for the field tiers under the 8th CPC is a projection, and the entitlement remains the 7th CPC matrix as enhanced from 1 January 2024.

What is on the record is the structure the 8th CPC will start from: three tiers, two of them cells of a ten-cell matrix and the third a percentage of a cell, escalated 25% per 50 points of dearness allowance, with classification split between two ministries against the 7th CPC’s own recommendation at paragraph 8.10.72. The tax caps at serial numbers 7, 8 and 14 have not moved since long before 2016, so a further matrix enhancement widens the taxable share unless the Central Board of Direct Taxes revises them.

Until the 8th CPC reports and the Government accepts its recommendations, the position is Rs. 21,125 and Rs. 12,125 at cell R1H2, Rs. 13,125 and Rs. 7,500 at cell R2H2, and Rs. 7,875 and Rs. 4,500 at 60% of R2H2, for a posting to an area the administering ministry has classified.

Related Articles

• Allowances for central government employees
• Risk and hardship allowance
• Flying allowance
• High Altitude and Siachen Allowance
• Counter-insurgency operations allowance
• Military Service Pay
• Defence pay matrix
• Special Duty Allowance
• Hard Area Allowance
• Island Special Duty Allowance
• National Holiday Allowance
• Central Armed Police Forces
• CAPF constable salary
• Sub-Inspector salary
• Dearness allowance
• Salary by pay level
• Pay matrix
• Basic pay
• CCS (Pension) Rules 2021
• Central government pension
• Gratuity for central government employees
• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• Income Tax Act 2025
• Income tax for government employees
• Old versus new tax regime
• Section 115BAC (default new regime)
• Take-home salary for central government employees
• Department of Expenditure
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• Central government employees in India
• 7th CPC salary calculator

External references

• Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, Department of Expenditure
• Department of Expenditure: orders and circulars
• Ministry of Defence
• Ministry of Home Affairs
• Rule 2BB of the Income-tax Rules 1962, Income Tax Department
• Income Tax Department: Acts and Rules
• Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (Pensions)

References

1. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (November 2015), paragraph 8.10.18: the definition of Field Areas and the three classifications, and the extension to Defence, Central Armed Police Forces and Indian Coast Guard personnel.
2. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (November 2015), paragraph 8.10.19: the pre-2016 rank-wise rates of the three field area allowances.
3. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (November 2015), paragraph 8.10.66: the salient features of the Risk and Hardship matrix, including the rule that rates rise 25% each time dearness allowance rises by 50%.
4. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (November 2015), paragraph 8.10.69: cell R1H2 at Rs. 16,900 and Rs. 9,700, Highly Active Field Area Allowance and Counter-Insurgency Operations Allowance in field areas, the raise from 93% to 100%, and the 77% derivation for modified field areas.
5. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (November 2015), paragraph 8.10.72: cell R2H2 at Rs. 10,500 and Rs. 6,000, Modified Field Area Allowance at 60% of the cell, Border Out Posts treated as Field Areas with a 25% enhancement for air-maintained posts, the joint classification committee recommendation, and the raise of the leave ceiling from fifteen days to thirty.
6. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (November 2015), paragraph 8.10.78: concurrent admissibility of allowances applicable to Defence personnel to remain unaltered.
7. Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017: Government decision on the 7th CPC recommendations on allowances, with the matrix cell rates effective 1 July 2017.
8. Department of Expenditure press note on the Cabinet decision of 28 June 2017, item 7(v): classification of field areas by the Ministry of Defence for Defence personnel and by the Ministry of Home Affairs for the Central Armed Police Forces.
9. Ministry of Defence letter No. 1(16)/2017/D(Pay/Services) dated 18 September 2017, with Appendix A: implementation of the Risk and Hardship Allowances for the armed forces with effect from 1 July 2017, including Modified Field Area Allowance at 60% of cell R2H2 and Counter-Insurgency Operations Allowance in modified field areas at 77% of the field-area rate.
10. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017: grant of Risk and Hardship Allowance to Central Armed Police Forces personnel, with paragraph 8 constituting the Union Home Secretary’s committee on classification of field areas.
11. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/2017-PF(Pt.II) dated 22 February 2019: revised classification of field areas in Jammu and Kashmir and the Left Wing Extremism districts, circulated by the Central Reserve Police Force on 8 March 2019.
12. Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules 2021, notified by G.S.R. 868(E) dated 20 December 2021: rule 31 (emoluments) and rule 32 (average emoluments).
13. Central Civil Services (Implementation of National Pension System) Rules 2021, notified by G.S.R. 227(E) dated 30 March 2021: rule 5(1), the contribution base.
14. Income-tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 30 of 2025), Section 202 and Schedule III, and 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, in the pre-2026 numbering, Rule 2BB(2) serial numbers 7, 8 and 14 of the Income-tax Rules 1962 and Rule 2BB(3) as substituted by Notification 43/2023.