Last Pay Certificate

The Last Pay Certificate, universally abbreviated to the LPC, is the document that certifies the pay and allowances last drawn by a central government servant, the date up to which they were paid, and the recoveries still to be continued, issued when the employee moves from one office to another or leaves service. It is prepared and signed by the last Drawing and Disbursing Officer, the Head of Office the employee is leaving, on a prescribed form, and it travels with the employee, or their service records, to the office or authority that must next make a payment. Without it, the office the employee is joining cannot lawfully pay the first instalment of pay, and the pension office cannot complete the final settlement cleanly.

The LPC exists to solve a simple problem: when a government servant is paid by one office up to a point and must next be paid by a different office, the second office needs to know exactly where the first left off, so that pay resumes from the correct date at the correct rate, and so that a running recovery, an advance being repaid in instalments or an income tax deduction, continues without a break or a duplication. The certificate carries all of that across the gap. It is, in effect, the accounting handover of a person’s pay from one Drawing and Disbursing Officer to the next.

An LPC is issued on three occasions: on transfer from one office or accounts circle to another, on deputation or foreign service, and on retirement or other end of service. In each case the mechanics are the same, the office being left certifies the last pay position, but the purpose differs: on transfer and deputation it lets a new office resume payment, while on retirement it feeds into the pension papers as the record of the emoluments last drawn.

This article sets out what the LPC is and the rules that govern it, the particulars it records, the three occasions on which it is issued, how it fits into the transfer of charge, who prepares it, its part in the pension settlement and the way a missing or delayed LPC can lead to a provisional pension, its role on deputation and foreign service, and the change of form from G.A.R. 2 under the 1983 Rules to Form R.P.R. 2 under the 2022 Rules. Every load-bearing reference is tied to the Central Government Account (Receipts and Payments) Rules and the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021.

What the Last Pay Certificate is and the rules that govern it

The LPC is a creature of the accounting rules, not of the pay or pension rules. It is governed by the Central Government Account (Receipts and Payments) Rules, the code that regulates how money is drawn from and paid into the government account. The 1983 version of these Rules prescribed the certificate on Form G.A.R. 2, the Government Account Receipts form numbered 2, headed simply “Last Pay Certificate”. When the Rules were revised and reissued in 2022 in supersession of the 1983 Rules, the detailed procedure and the forms moved into the Subsidiary Instructions issued under them, and the certificate was renumbered as Form R.P.R. 2, carrying the same title. An LPC written today is a Form R.P.R. 2; older references and many office templates still call it a G.A.R. 2, and the two are the same document under successive versions of the same Rules.

The requirement is anchored in two linked provisions of the Rules. The first bars a payment: the first series of payments of pay and allowances to a government servant at a new office cannot be drawn by the Drawing and Disbursing Officer unless the claim is supported by a copy of the Last Pay Certificate issued by the DDO of the office where the servant last served. The second imposes the duty to issue: on transfer, deputation or foreign service, the last Drawing and Disbursing Officer must issue the Last Pay Certificate and send copies to the new office and to the employee. Together these mean that the LPC is not optional paperwork, it is the precondition of the next payment, and issuing it is a defined duty of the office the employee leaves.

What the LPC records

The value of the LPC is in its particulars, and the form is laid out to capture the whole pay position in one place. It records the identity of the employee and the offices involved: name, employee identification, designation, group and pay level in the pay matrix, the office and post being left, and the office and post being joined. It then records the pay and allowances last drawn, item by item, at their rates and with the dates from which drawn: basic pay, any special pay or personal pay, dearness allowance, house rent allowance, transport allowance and any other allowances the employee was drawing.

Crucially, the LPC states the date up to which pay, leave salary and allowances were drawn and paid, so the next office knows the exact point from which to resume. It records the deductions and recoveries in force, so that they continue without a break: income tax deducted at source and the position of the year’s tax on salary, the subscription and account number for the General Provident Fund, the subscription to the Central Government Employees Group Insurance Scheme, the Central Government Health Scheme contribution, and the licence fee where the employee occupies government accommodation. It lists the recoveries still to be made against advances, a house building advance, a computer or other advance, or a GPF advance, each with the instalment number reached, so the new office knows how many instalments remain. It also notes the leave account position and any court attachment or other recovery ordered against the pay. The General Provident Fund entry is separately required by the Rules: when a subscriber is transferred, the fact of subscription, the monthly amount and the Fund account number must be certified on the LPC, so that the GPF ledger follows the subscriber without a gap.

The three occasions for an LPC

An LPC is issued whenever a government servant ceases to draw pay from one office and must draw it from another, or ceases to draw it at all. The Rules name the occasions together: transfer, deputation and foreign service. To these the practice on the ground adds the end of service, retirement or death, where a final LPC forms part of the settlement records.

On transfer from one office to another, or from one accounts circle to another, the LPC is the core case. The employee stops drawing pay at the old office on the date of relief and starts drawing it at the new office on the date of joining, and the LPC bridges the two so that the new office resumes pay from the right date and continues the recoveries. On deputation or foreign service, where the employee is lent to another organisation, the LPC travels to the borrowing office or the deputation authority so that pay and the GPF position are known, and it is issued again on reversion so that the parent office can resume pay. On retirement or other end of service, the last office certifies the final pay position, and the LPC becomes one of the records that support the pension and gratuity settlement. In each case the certifying office is the one the employee is leaving, and the receiving office is the one that must next act on the pay.

Transfer of charge and how the LPC fits

The LPC is one half of a pair of handover documents. When a government servant is relieved from a post, they hand over charge of the office and its work through a transfer of charge, a report that records the date and time of relinquishment and assumption and the state of the office handed over. The LPC is the financial counterpart: where the charge report hands over the duties, the LPC hands over the pay. The two are prepared around the same relief, and together they fix the exact moment the old office’s responsibility ends and the new office’s begins.

The interlock matters because pay and charge must agree. The date up to which the old office has drawn and paid pay, certified on the LPC, should line up with the date of relinquishment on the charge report, so that there is neither a gap in which the employee is unpaid nor an overlap in which two offices claim the same pay. When an employee is transferred with a spell of joining time in between, the LPC and the charge report also fix how that joining time is treated for pay. A clean LPC, agreeing with the charge report, is what lets the new Head of Office draw the first pay without a query.

Who prepares and issues the LPC

The LPC is a Drawing and Disbursing Officer’s document. It is prepared and signed by the DDO, the Head of Office or the officer authorised to draw and disburse pay, of the office the employee is leaving, and it is that officer who certifies the pay last drawn and the recoveries to continue. The form is signed under the DDO’s name and code, and the responsibility for its accuracy rests there.

Under the departmentalised accounting system that applies across the civil ministries, there is a division of labour between the DDO and the Pay and Accounts Office. The DDO prepares the pay bills, makes the recoveries and issues the LPC; the Pay and Accounts Officer scrutinises and passes the bills and authorises the payment. The LPC is authored on the DDO side, and the PAO relies on it rather than issuing it. This is why an employee chasing a delayed LPC must approach the old Head of Office or DDO, the office that drew their pay, and not the accounts office that merely paid the bills.

The LPC in the pension settlement

On retirement the LPC changes role. It is no longer bridging pay between two serving offices; it is feeding the pension papers with the record of the emoluments last drawn. The pension and gratuity of a central government employee are worked out on the emoluments and the average emoluments of the last months of service, and the LPC, together with the pay bills and the service book, is a record of what those emoluments were. The CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 set out the stages of completing the pension papers, and the verification of pay and service that the LPC supports is part of that process, which the Head of Office is required to begin well before the retirement date so that the Pension Payment Order issues on time.

The pension sanction process and its timeline is built around getting these records, the LPC among them, to the Pay and Accounts Office in good time. The Rules require the pension papers to reach the PAO several months before retirement and the PPO to be ready about a month before, so that the pension calculation is complete and the pension begins from the day after retirement without a break. A correct LPC, fixing the last pay drawn, is one of the inputs that lets the emoluments be settled without dispute, and so lets the pension arrears that would otherwise arise from a late fixation be avoided.

A missing or delayed LPC and the provisional pension

Because the LPC is one of the records the pension settlement relies on, a missing or delayed LPC is one of the administrative reasons a final pension can be held up. It is not a named statutory ground on its own, but where any of the records or verifications needed for the final pension is incomplete when the employee retires, the Pension Payment Order cannot issue in time, and the Rules provide for the gap to be bridged. Under Rule 62 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021, where the Head of Office anticipates that the regular pension or gratuity cannot be sanctioned by the date of retirement, a provisional pension is sanctioned, so that the retiree is not left without income while the final settlement is completed. The same payment, sanctioned because the case is merely delayed rather than because a proceeding is pending, is what older central instructions and several state rules call an anticipatory pension.

The provisional pension runs for a limited period, up to six months, within which the final pension is expected to be settled, and it is adjusted against the final pension once the Pension Payment Order issues. A delayed LPC, or a dispute about the last pay drawn that the LPC would have settled, is exactly the kind of loose end that a provisional pension is designed to cover. Where the delay in the final settlement is on the administration’s side, the delayed payment can also carry interest on the delayed pension under the pension rules. The lesson for the retiring employee is that an LPC issued cleanly and in time by the last office is one of the things that keeps a retirement on the regular pension rather than the provisional one.

Deputation and foreign service

On deputation and foreign service the LPC does double duty, once when the employee proceeds and once when they revert. When a government servant goes on deputation to a borrowing organisation, the last office issues an LPC so that the borrowing office, or the accounts office handling the deputation, knows the pay position and the GPF subscription to continue. Where the deputation is to a body outside the government, a foreign service in the technical sense, the pay is drawn from the borrowing organisation, but the pension and, in the relevant cases, the leave salary must be protected by contributions to the government so that the period continues to count.

The Fundamental Rules govern those contributions: while a government servant is on foreign service, the pension contribution is payable to the government, and where the foreign service is in India the leave salary contribution is also payable, so that the qualifying service for pension and the leave account are not broken by the spell outside. On reversion, a fresh LPC fixes the date from which the parent office resumes pay and the point to which the GPF and the recoveries have run. The lien the employee retains on the parent post throughout the deputation is the counterpart on the establishment side; the LPC is the counterpart on the pay side, ensuring the pay position is picked up exactly where it was left.

From G.A.R. 2 to Form R.P.R. 2

The change of the Receipts and Payments Rules in 2022 modernised the LPC without changing its purpose. Under the 1983 Rules the form was G.A.R. 2; under the 2022 Rules, with the procedure carried into the Subsidiary Instructions, it became Form R.P.R. 2. The mapping between the old and new forms is explicit in the Subsidiary Instructions, which list G.A.R. 2 as becoming R.P.R. 2, the Last Pay Certificate, so there is no doubt that the two are the same document under successive codes.

The revised form reflects the way pay is now drawn and paid electronically. It captures the employee identification, the Permanent Account Number and the pay level, and, for an employee covered by the National Pension System, the Permanent Retirement Account Number, alongside the older particulars. Its body is reorganised into the gross pay, the deductions and the recoveries, with the loan instalment numbers set out so that the receiving office can see at a glance how far each advance has been repaid. The substance is unchanged: it still certifies the pay last drawn, the date paid up to, and the recoveries to continue, which is the whole point of a Last Pay Certificate whatever it is numbered.

The consequence of a delayed LPC

The single practical consequence that makes the LPC matter to an employee is a held-up pay. Because the Rules bar the first payment at the new office without the LPC, an employee who is transferred and joins a new office before the LPC arrives finds their pay stopped at the new station until the certificate comes through. The old office’s failure to issue the LPC promptly is felt not by the old office but by the employee, who is left without pay at the new post, and by the new DDO, who cannot lawfully draw the pay.

The Rules impose the duty to issue the LPC but do not fix a rigid number of days for it, so the discipline is administrative rather than a hard statutory deadline. The remedy for an employee facing a delay is to pursue the old Head of Office or DDO, since that is where the LPC originates, and, where the delay is prolonged, to have the new office take up the matter through the accounts channel. On technical resignation to take up another government post, and on transfer between ministries, the same LPC requirement applies, so the same delay can arise, which is why the issuing office is expected to prepare the LPC as part of the relief itself rather than after it.

Across the schemes and the 8th Central Pay Commission

The LPC is scheme-neutral. It certifies pay and recoveries, which every serving employee has, whether the employee is on the Old Pension Scheme, the National Pension System or the Unified Pension Scheme. What differs across the schemes is only the retirement benefit the LPC ultimately feeds: for a defined-benefit pensioner the LPC helps fix the emoluments for the pension and gratuity, while for an NPS employee it carries the PRAN and the contribution position instead. The document and its purpose are the same in every case, because pay, recoveries and the General Provident Fund or the NPS contribution have to be handed over whichever scheme applies.

The 8th Central Pay Commission, constituted in November 2025, will revise pay levels and the pay matrix, and so the actual rupee figures that an LPC certifies will change once the revised pay is fixed. The form and its procedure, however, are set by the Receipts and Payments Rules and are not a matter for a pay commission. Any pay figure attributed to the 8th Central Pay Commission is a projection until the Commission reports and revised pay rules are notified; the LPC will continue to certify whatever the pay in force happens to be.

Related Articles

• Transfer of charge
• Head of Office
• Pay and Accounts Office
• Provisional pension
• Pension sanction process and timeline
• Central government pension
• PPO and life certificate
• CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021
• Pension calculation
• Pension arrears
• Interest on delayed pension
• No demand certificate
• Withholding and recovery from gratuity
• Deputation in central government
• Technical resignation
• Joining time
• Lien
• Qualifying service
• General Provident Fund
• Pay matrix
• Dearness allowance
• House rent allowance
• Transport allowance
• TDS on salary
• Central Government Employees Group Insurance Scheme
• Central Government Health Scheme
• Old Pension Scheme
• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• 8th Central Pay Commission

External references

• Controller General of Accounts
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare
• Department of Expenditure
• Pensioners’ Portal

References

1. Central Government Account (Receipts and Payments) Rules, 1983, provisions requiring a copy of the Last Pay Certificate (Form G.A.R. 2) in support of the first payment of pay and allowances at a new office, and requiring the last Drawing and Disbursing Officer to issue the Last Pay Certificate on transfer, deputation and foreign service.
2. Central Government Account (Receipts and Payments) Rules, 2022, in supersession of the 1983 Rules, and the Subsidiary Instructions issued under them, prescribing the Last Pay Certificate on Form R.P.R. 2 and mapping the former Form G.A.R. 2 to Form R.P.R. 2.
3. Central Government Account (Receipts and Payments) Rules, 1983, provision requiring the fact of General Provident Fund subscription, the monthly amount and the Fund account number to be certified on the Last Pay Certificate on transfer.
4. Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 2021, Rule 59 (stages of completion of the pension papers and the verification of pay and service, for which the Last Pay Certificate is a record), and the associated timeline for the preparation of the pension papers.
5. Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 2021, Rule 62 (sanction of a provisional pension and gratuity where the regular pension cannot be sanctioned by the date of retirement) and Rule 65 (interest on a pension or gratuity delayed for administrative reasons).
6. Fundamental Rules 115 and 116 (pension and leave salary contributions payable while a government servant is on foreign service, and the counting of the period for pension and leave).
7. Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Resolution F. No. 01-01/2025-E.III(A), dated 3 November 2025, constituting the 8th Central Pay Commission.