Non-functional upgradation (NFU)

Non-functional upgradation, commonly abbreviated NFU and also called Non-Functional Financial Upgradation, is the grant of the pay of a higher grade, without the post and without the duties, to an officer of an Organised Group A Service who has not been promoted to that grade. It was created by Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/64/2008-Estt.(RR) dated 24 April 2009 of the Department of Personnel and Training, takes effect from 1 January 2006, and is triggered when the first officer of an Indian Administrative Service batch two or more years junior is posted at the centre in that grade.

The device answers a structural problem in central service careers. An officer of an Organised Group A Service and an Indian Administrative Service officer of the same year enter service together, but the two ladders do not rise at the same rate. Cadre strengths differ, vacancies at the Senior Administrative Grade are few in a small service and plentiful in a large one, and an officer can complete every qualifying condition for the next grade and still wait years for a post. Non-functional upgradation severs the pay from the post. The officer stays where he is, doing the same work, and draws the money of the grade that an officer of a junior Indian Administrative Service batch already holds at the centre.

The 7th Central Pay Commission could not agree on what to do with it. The chairman wanted it kept, extended to the uniformed services and rebuilt around residency periods; two of the three members wanted it withdrawn. Paragraph 14 of Ministry of Finance Resolution No. 1-2/2016-IC dated 25 July 2016 resolved the disagreement by not resolving it, ordering that status quo be maintained pending a separate administrative decision. Ten years on, no such decision has been announced, and non-functional upgradation still runs on the 6th Central Pay Commission design of 2009.

This article sets out the governing instructions and the four conditions that must all hold, the screening committee that decides and how it differs from a departmental promotion committee , pay fixation with a worked example, the definition of an Organised Group A Service and the services inside and outside it, the litigation that brought the Central Armed Police Forces in and has so far kept the armed forces out, and the distinctions between non-functional upgradation and the three neighbouring devices with which it is routinely confused.

Legal basis and the governing instructions

Non-functional upgradation has no statutory foundation in the central civil services. It rests on executive instructions. The operative order is Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/64/2008-Estt.(RR) dated 24 April 2009, issued by the Establishment (Recruitment Rules) Division of the Department of Personnel and Training and titled “Non-Functional upgradation for Officers of Organised Group ‘A’ Services in PB-3 and PB-4”. Two clarificatory orders followed: Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/64/2008-Estt.(RR) dated 25 September 2009, and a set of frequently asked questions issued as Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/47/2011-Estt.(RR) dated 1 August 2012.

Those three documents were consolidated into Office Memorandum No. AB-14017/13/2022-Estt.(RR) dated 15 September 2022, a five-page compilation headed “‘Non-Functional Upgradation’ in respect of Organised Group ‘A’ Services”. Its appendix lists exactly those three source orders and nothing else. Anyone citing a fourth instruction should check it against that appendix before relying on it.

For the Indian Police Service and the Indian Forest Service the position is different, and stronger. Non-functional upgradation for those two All India Services is statutory, written into Note 1 of the Schedule to the Indian Police Service (Pay) Rules, 2016, notified as G.S.R. 910(E) on 23 September 2016 and deemed to be in force from 1 January 2016, and into the corresponding Note in the Indian Forest Service (Pay) Rules, 2016. An executive instruction can be withdrawn by another executive instruction; a statutory rule requires an amendment notified in the Gazette.

The scheme originates in the 6th Central Pay Commission, which recommended a device of modified parity under which an Organised Group A batch two years senior to the Indian Administrative Service batch empanelled at the centre would draw the higher scale on a non-functional basis. The 6th Central Pay Commission framed it in pay bands and grade pay ; the 2009 order carried that framing, which is why it is titled by reference to Pay Band 3 and Pay Band 4. The 7th Central Pay Commission replaced pay bands with the pay matrix , and the 2022 compilation restates the same rules in pay-level terms.

The four conditions

Paragraph 1(i) of the Office Memorandum dated 24 April 2009 states the trigger:

“Whenever an Indian Administrative Services Officer of the State of Joint Cadre is posted at the Centre to a particular grade carrying a specific grade pay in Pay band 3 or Pay Band 4, the officers belong to batches of Organised Group A Services that are senior by two years or more and have not so far been promoted to that particular grade would be granted the same grade on non-functional basis from the date of posting of the Indian Administrative Service Officers in that particular grade at the Centre.”

Four conditions must all hold. An Indian Administrative Service officer of a state or joint cadre must be posted at the centre in the grade concerned. The claimant must belong to an Organised Group A Service. The claimant’s batch must be senior to that Indian Administrative Service batch by two years or more. And the claimant must not already have been promoted to that grade in his own cadre.

The date of effect is the date on which the first officer of the relevant Indian Administrative Service batch is posted at the centre in that grade. It is not the date of empanelment, not the date on which the Department of Personnel and Training circulates the batch details, and not 1 January of the year. Empanelment is the antecedent step; posting is the operative one. Where the sanction order issues late, condition 6 of Annexure I directs that the financial benefit run from the due date, so delay costs the officer nothing beyond the wait.

Paragraph 1(iv) of the 2009 order requires the Establishment Division to issue periodic orders naming, for each grade, the Indian Administrative Service batch posted at the centre and the date of posting of the first officer of that batch. Those batch orders are the operative documents in practice. Office Memorandum File No. AB.14017/30/2011-PP.(RR) Vol.III dated 8 May 2025 records that the 2000 batch was posted as Additional Secretary from 18 April 2025, making Organised Group A batches of 1998 and earlier eligible in Level 15, and that the 2009 batch was posted as Joint Secretary from 21 March 2025, making batches of 2007 and earlier eligible in Level 14. An order of the same file number dated 26 May 2025 records the 2011 batch as Director from 1 January 2025, making batches of 2009 and earlier eligible in Level 13.

For a direct recruit, “batch” means the year following the year in which the competitive examination was held, and it does not change as the officer moves up the grades. The one exception is supersession: an officer who is superseded goes with the batch alongside which his seniority is fixed. That rule is at paragraph 4(xii) of the 2022 compilation, drawn from Frequently Asked Question No. 7 of the order dated 1 August 2012. Officers inducted into an Organised Group A Service by promotion rather than direct recruitment are equally eligible, and take the batch of the direct recruits with whom their seniority is clubbed.

The screening committee

Non-functional upgradation is not decided by a departmental promotion committee . This is the point on which serving officers are most often misinformed, and the distinction matters, because the two bodies have different compositions and different terms of reference.

Condition 4 of Annexure I to the 2009 order prescribes a screening committee of three members, each at least one level above the grade under consideration, chaired by the Secretary of the ministry concerned. There is no association of the Union Public Service Commission, no zone of consideration, no select list and no panel validity period. Those are features of the promotion machinery, and they exist because promotion is a competition for a finite number of posts. Non-functional upgradation is not vacancy-linked, so there is nothing to compete for and nobody to rank.

What the screening committee does apply is the substantive test. Condition 3 of Annexure I requires that “all the prescribed eligibility criteria and promotional norms including ‘benchmark’ for up-gradation to a particular grade pay would have to be met” at the time of screening. The batch orders spell out the residency requirement explicitly: the officer must have completed the necessary residency period in the feeder grade as on the crucial date of eligibility for promotion to the grade. So the two-batch rule sets the outer boundary of eligibility, and the officer must independently satisfy every condition that would apply to a real promotion, short of the existence of a vacancy. An officer who falls below the benchmark does not get the upgradation.

Where an officer is not found eligible in one vacancy year but is found fit in the next, the upgradation runs from 1 January of that next vacancy year rather than from the original posting date. Where the qualifying service is incomplete as on 1 January of the vacancy year, the officer is considered in the following vacancy year, again from 1 January. Both rules are at paragraphs 4(xvi) and 4(xvii) of the 2022 compilation.

Penalty, disciplinary proceedings and suspension

Condition 5 of Annexure I imports the instructions applicable to the grant of the Non-Functional Selection Grade to Group A officers, in the event of a penalty, disciplinary proceedings or suspension . The compilation then supplies the timing rule, taken from Frequently Asked Question No. 16 of the order dated 1 August 2012 and reproduced at paragraph 4(xviii).

Two cases. Where the upgradation falls due after the penalty period has expired, it is granted from the normal due date, with no reduction. Where it falls due during the currency of a penalty, it is granted from the day after the penalty period ends. A penalty therefore postpones the money; it does not forfeit it. That mirrors the treatment of a penalty at a departmental promotion committee , where the currency of a penalty bars promotion during its running but leaves the officer’s claim intact afterwards, and it is consistent with the general principle that a punishment cannot be extended beyond the period for which it was imposed.

An officer under suspension or facing a pending departmental inquiry is dealt with under the Non-Functional Selection Grade instructions rather than under a separate NFU-specific rule. In practice this means the case is held and decided on the outcome, in the same way that a sealed cover operates at a promotion committee.

Pay fixation

Paragraph 4(vii) of the 2022 compilation states the rule:

“On grant of NFU in the next pay scale/pay level, the pay would be fixed as per the provisions of CCS (RP) Rules, 2016, as amended from time to time i.e. the pay would be fixed in the next cell of the higher pay level after granting one increment in the lower pay level. Officers can exercise option to get their pay fixed in the higher pay scale/pay level, as provided in CCS (RP) Rules, 2016.”

That is Rule 13 of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 , the rule that governs pay fixation on promotion, applied to an upgradation that is not a promotion. The 7th Central Pay Commission described the same two-step method at paragraphs 7.3.23 and 11.22.21 of its report: add one increment to the existing pay, which moves the officer to the next cell in the current level; then locate the figure closest to that amount in the higher level and fix pay at that step.

An option is available, exactly as on promotion, so an officer whose annual increment falls shortly after the upgradation date may elect to have pay fixed from the date of the increment instead.

Worked example

Take an officer of the 2007 batch of an Organised Group A Service, holding the Non-Functional Selection Grade in Level 13, not yet promoted to the Senior Administrative Grade, and drawing basic pay of Rs. 1,55,900, which is cell 9 of Level 13. The Office Memorandum dated 8 May 2025 records that the Indian Administrative Service 2009 batch was posted at the centre as Joint Secretary on 21 March 2025, making batches of 2007 and earlier eligible for non-functional upgradation in Level 14 from that date.

Step one. One increment in Level 13 moves the officer from Rs. 1,55,900 to Rs. 1,60,600, the next cell in the same level.

Step two. That figure is located in Level 14. The Level 14 cells run Rs. 1,44,200, Rs. 1,48,500, Rs. 1,53,000, Rs. 1,57,600, Rs. 1,62,300 and upward. There is no cell at Rs. 1,60,600, so pay is fixed at the next higher cell, Rs. 1,62,300.

The officer draws Rs. 1,62,300 in Level 14 with effect from 21 March 2025, a gain of Rs. 6,400 a month in basic pay , which carries with it a proportionate rise in dearness allowance , house rent allowance and transport allowance , all of which are computed on basic pay in the level. The next increment falls due on the normal increment date of 1 January or 1 July under Rule 10 of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, not on an anniversary of the upgradation.

When this officer is eventually promoted to the Senior Administrative Grade in his own cadre, pay is not fixed again. Condition 8 of Annexure I to the 2009 order bars a second fixation where the grade has already been granted on a non-functional basis. The increment on promotion is drawn once, at the point of upgradation, and the later functional promotion brings the post and the duties but no further money.

The levels involved

Level 13 deserves a note, because it is the commonest destination for a non-functional upgradation and because its figures changed. As originally notified in the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 by G.S.R. 721(E) dated 25 July 2016, Level 13 ran from Rs. 1,18,500 on an index of rationalisation of 2.57. The Amendment Rules of 2017, G.S.R. 592(E) dated 15 June 2017, replaced it with a level starting at Rs. 1,23,100 on an index of 2.67, and Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 4-6/2017-IC/E-III(A) dated 28 September 2017 records that the original Level 13 is to be treated as non-existent ab initio. Any worked example built on Rs. 1,18,500 is out of date.

Officers already serving at the centre

An officer of an Organised Group A Service who is already on deputation to the centre under the Central Staffing Scheme when the upgradation is granted is treated differently. Condition 7(ii) of Annexure I, restated at paragraph 4(viii) of the 2022 compilation, gives such an officer one additional increment only. The grade pay or pay level attached to the centre post is not disturbed, and Central Deputation Tenure Allowance continues where it is admissible. The logic is that the officer is already drawing the pay of the centre post, so the upgradation would otherwise pay twice for the same grade.

Note 1 of the Schedule to the Indian Police Service (Pay) Rules, 2016 states the same rule for Indian Police Service officers, with an added floor: the officer gets one increment in the existing level subject to the minimum of the level of the non-functional upgradation.

Officers on deputation elsewhere, on study leave, or on any other sanctioned leave are considered in the ordinary way, under condition 9 of Annexure I. Absence from the cadre does not disqualify.

Which services are covered

The scheme is confined to the Organised Group A Services, and the boundary of that class is the most contested question in this area of service law.

The Department of Personnel and Training set out the attributes of an Organised Group A Service in an Office Memorandum dated 19 November 2009, issued because, in its own words, the difference between such a service and other services and cadres had not been fully appreciated. Six attributes are listed: the highest cadre post is not below the Senior Administrative Grade; the service has all the standard grades from Junior Time Scale to Senior Administrative Grade; at least 50 per cent of Junior Time Scale vacancies are filled by direct recruitment; all vacancies above the Junior Time Scale and up to the Senior Administrative Grade are filled by promotion from the next lower grade; the cadres are governed by composite service rules permitting horizontal and vertical movement up to at least the Senior Administrative Grade, and no post is classified as General Central Service; and the service consists of regular duty posts plus probationary, leave, training and deputation reserves.

Two qualifications sit in the same order and are constantly overlooked. A note records that existing Organised Group A Services have evolved over time and may show minor deviations, and that services already declared as such need not be reviewed. And paragraph 2 states that there is nothing to suggest that a service fulfilling the criteria would automatically be conferred the status: an Organised Group A Service is one which is constituted consciously as such by the cadre controlling authorities, through the established procedures. The attributes are therefore descriptive, not a self-executing test.

Nor is there a published register. The Cadre Review Division of the Department of Personnel and Training states on its own right-to-information page that it does not maintain any separate list of the Organised Group A Services. The nearest thing to a count is the 7th Central Pay Commission’s, which put the figure at 49 at paragraph 7.3.25(b).

The All India Services

The Indian Police Service and the Indian Forest Service draw non-functional upgradation by statute rather than by executive instruction. Note 1 of the Schedule to the Indian Police Service (Pay) Rules, 2016 provides that whenever an Indian Administrative Service officer of a particular batch is posted at the centre to Levels 10, 11, 12, 13, 13A, 14 and 15, members of the service senior to that officer by two years or more who have not been promoted to that level are granted the same level on a non-functional basis in their respective state cadres. The Indian Forest Service rule is in the same terms, over a narrower list of levels.

The Indian Administrative Service is the benchmark against which the two-batch rule is measured, and is not itself a beneficiary. What the Indian Administrative Service has instead is the two additional increments on promotion to the Junior Administrative Grade and again to the Selection Grade, under the Indian Administrative Service (Pay) Rules, 2016, which are not extended to the Indian Police Service or the Indian Forest Service. Paragraph 14 of the Resolution dated 25 July 2016 holds that question at status quo as well.

The Central Armed Police Forces and the Railway Protection Force

The Group A executive cadres of the Central Armed Police Forces reached the scheme through litigation rather than through an administrative decision, and the sequence is set out in the section on case law below. Since the orders of July 2019, non-functional upgradation is admissible to the Group A executive cadres of the Central Reserve Police Force , the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and the Sashastra Seema Bal, with effect from 1 January 2006, and to the Railway Protection Force , which is a force under the Ministry of Railways and not a Central Armed Police Force at all.

Office Memorandum dated 12 July 2019 of the Department of Personnel and Training names those five forces and the Railway Protection Force. Assam Rifles and the National Security Guard, which the Ministry of Home Affairs counts among the Central Armed Police Forces, are not in that order.

Who is outside the scheme

Officers of the armed forces do not draw non-functional upgradation. The chairman of the 7th Central Pay Commission recommended extending it to them at paragraph 11.22.20; the Resolution of 25 July 2016 kept the question at status quo; and the litigation, described below, remains undecided.

Group B officers and officers of Group A cadres that have not been constituted as Organised Group A Services are outside the scheme as such. The Cadre Review Division’s position is categorical even on the narrower Non-Functional Selection Grade, which it says can be extended to the Organised Group A Services only.

The Central Secretariat Service is not a notified Organised Group A Service and does not draw the upgradation of 24 April 2009. What its Section Officers get is a different instrument with a confusingly similar name, dealt with in the comparison below. The Cadre Restructuring Committee for the service recommended against extending either a time scale for Under Secretaries or the Non-Functional Selection Grade to it, so the exclusion is a settled policy position rather than a judicial holding.

What the upgradation does not confer

Condition 2 of Annexure I is the operative limit: the upgradation is “purely non-functional, personal to the officer”, and “would not bestow any right to the officer to claim promotion or deputation benefits”. Four consequences follow.

There is no gain in seniority . An officer upgraded to Level 14 does not move ahead of any colleague and does not enter the Senior Administrative Grade for any purpose other than the drawing of pay.

There are no new duties and no new post. The officer remains the incumbent of the same post, with the same functions and the same reporting relationships. Nothing in the recruitment rules of the higher grade is engaged.

There is no claim to a deputation post in the upgraded grade. The 7th Central Pay Commission recommended at paragraph 7.3.24 that officers holding the upgradation be permitted to apply for deputation posts in the higher grade. That recommendation went into the status quo bucket with the rest, so condition 2 continues to govern.

And there is no second pay fixation on eventual promotion, under condition 8.

Condition 10 frames the whole scheme as a fall back option, available to officers who are stagnating after completing the minimum eligibility service prescribed for promotion. The compilation restates that at paragraph 4(xi). It is a remedy for the absence of a vacancy, not an alternative career ladder.

One question the orders do not answer is whether an upgradation once granted can be withdrawn or reverted. Condition 2 makes the benefit personal to the officer, and condition 5 imports the Non-Functional Selection Grade rules for penalty and disciplinary situations, but neither addresses the withdrawal of an upgradation that has already taken effect. The point is unsettled.

Effect on allowances, deputation allowance and pension

Pay fixed on non-functional upgradation is real basic pay in a real pay level. It therefore counts for dearness allowance , house rent allowance , transport allowance and every other entitlement in the allowances framework that runs on basic pay, and it counts as emoluments for pension and retirement gratuity under the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 , which define emoluments as the basic pay drawn immediately before retirement. Paragraph 4(xv) of the 2022 compilation, which requires officers who retired after becoming eligible to be considered and paid, would have no purpose if the upgraded pay did not reach the pension.

There is one clean exception, and it is the trap. Deputation (Duty) Allowance is computed on basic pay in the parent cadre, but Note 2 below paragraph 4(d) of Office Memorandum No. 2/11/2017-Estt.(Pay-II) dated 24 November 2017 excludes upgraded pay from that base:

“In cases where the basic pay in the parent cadre has been upgraded on account of non-functional upgradation (NFU), Modified Assured Career Progression Scheme (MACP), Non-Functional Selection Grade (NFSG), etc., the upgraded basic pay under such upgradations shall not be taken into account for the purpose of Deputation (Duty) Allowance.”

The exclusion took effect from 1 July 2017 and was clarified by an order of the same number dated 15 March 2021. Note 3 of the same Office Memorandum deals separately, and differently, with a proforma promotion under the Next Below Rule , where the allowance is admissible on the parent-cadre pay if the proforma promotion is to a level equal to or below that of the ex-cadre post.

The 7th Central Pay Commission and the status quo decision

This is the single most misreported point about non-functional upgradation, and it is worth being precise about what happened.

The chairman of the 7th Central Pay Commission recommended that the scheme continue, that it be extended to the Central Armed Police Forces, the Indian Coast Guard and the defence forces, and that it be delinked from the Indian Administrative Service batch and rebuilt around residency periods in the feeder grade. Those recommendations are at paragraphs 7.3.21, 7.3.22, 11.22.20 and 11.22.21, and are summarised at paragraph 17.55 of the executive summary.

Two of the three members disagreed. Shri Vivek Rae and Dr Rathin Roy favoured abolishing the upgradation at the Senior Administrative Grade and Higher Administrative Grade levels, for reasons set out at paragraphs 7.3.25 and 7.3.26 and recorded at paragraph 17.56 of the executive summary.

The government did neither. Paragraph 14 of Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure Resolution No. 1-2/2016-IC dated 25 July 2016 reads:

“Until a decision is taken by the Government on administrative issues pertaining to (i) Non Functional Upgradation (NFU) presently admissible to the Indian Police Service/Indian Forest Service and Organised Group ‘A’ Services, (ii) two years’ edge to Indian Administrative Service officers vis-a-vis other All India Services/Organised Group ‘A’ Services in empanelment under Central Staffing Scheme, (iii) grant of two additional increments at Senior Time Scale, Junior Administrative Grade and Selection Grade to Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service at par with Indian Administrative Service and Indian Foreign Service (iv) a uniform retirement age for all ranks in Central Armed Police Forces, where the Commission could not arrive at a consensus, status quo shall be maintained.”

Three things follow. The recommendation to abolish was not accepted. The recommendation to extend and redesign was not accepted either. And non-functional upgradation continues on the 2009 design, keyed to the posting of an Indian Administrative Service batch at the centre and not to residency periods, which is exactly what the batch orders of 8 May 2025 and 26 May 2025 show it doing.

The 8th Central Pay Commission , constituted by Resolution F. No. 01-01/2025-E.III(A) dated 3 November 2025, has terms of reference covering pay, allowances, bonus, gratuity and pension. Nothing in them asks the commission to examine non-functional upgradation.

Case law

The Central Armed Police Forces

Officers of the Central Armed Police Forces were refused the upgradation on the footing that their forces were not Organised Group A Services. The Delhi High Court rejected that position in G.J. Singh v. Union of India, decided on 3 September 2015, quashing the Office Memorandum dated 28 October 2013 and directing that a notification granting Non-Functional Financial Upgradation issue within eight weeks.

The Supreme Court dismissed the Union’s appeals in Union of India v. Sri Harananda, (2019) 14 SCC 126, decided on 5 February 2019 by a bench of Nariman and M. R. Shah JJ. Three strands of the reasoning matter. Compliance with the six attributes was not to be given too much weight, given the note in the 2009 order permitting minor deviations. The government had itself recorded the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force as organised services since 1986, in its own monographs of 1986, 1993 and 2010, and could not then reverse the position. And a pay commission is not authorised to define an organised service or to confer that status, so the fact that the 6th Central Pay Commission had not recommended the upgradation for the Central Armed Police Forces could not be a ground for refusing it. The same judgment held that the Railway Protection Force is rightly treated as an Organised Group A Central Service.

Orders followed on 4 July 2019, conveying approval for Organised Group A status for the Group A executive cadres of the Central Armed Police Forces, with Non-Functional Financial Upgradation from 1 January 2006 and the Non-Functional Selection Grade at 30 per cent of senior duty posts from 6 June 2000. The Office Memorandum dated 12 July 2019 recorded that the Railway Protection Force and the Group A executive cadres of the five named forces are treated as Organised Group A Services for cadre review and other related matters.

That did not end the litigation. On 27 July 2020 the Delhi High Court read the 2019 judgment narrowly, as a decision about the upgradation and nothing more, and declined to direct amendment of the recruitment rules. The Supreme Court corrected that reading in Sanjay Prakash v. Union of India, 2025 INSC 779, decided on 23 May 2025 by Oka and Bhuyan JJ. Paragraph 43 of that judgment holds that the Office Memorandum of 12 July 2019 makes it clear that the forces are Organised Group A Services for all purposes, and that it cannot be that they are granted one benefit and denied the other. The court directed a cadre review within six months, a review of the recruitment rules within six months after hearing representatives of the cadre officers, a decision by the Department of Personnel and Training within three months of receiving the action taken report, and a progressive reduction of deputation posts up to the Senior Administrative Grade within an outer limit of two years.

The chronology is worth keeping straight. The 2019 judgment produced the upgradation. The 2025 judgment produced the wider status, the cadre review and the deputation directions.

The armed forces

The Armed Forces Tribunal held in Col Mukul Dev v. Union of India, O.A. No. 802 of 2015, that the denial of the upgradation to armed forces officers was unjustified and directed that it be granted. The Union appealed. As at July 2026 that appeal is pending before the Supreme Court, and a committee constituted by the Ministry of Defence and chaired by the Financial Adviser (Defence Services) has reported against the grant. Armed forces officers accordingly do not draw non-functional upgradation.

A related judgment is a common source of confusion. Union of India v. Lt Col Mukul Dev, W.P.(C) 12769 of 2024, decided by the Delhi High Court on 23 February 2026, turns entirely on the contempt and enforcement powers of the Armed Forces Tribunal under sections 19 and 29 of the Armed Forces Tribunal Act, 2007. It holds that tribunals are not courts of record and that section 19 does not reach disobedience of a final order. It decides nothing about non-functional upgradation.

The Level 8 to Level 9 upgradation

A separate line of cases concerns an entirely different benefit that shares the name. Paragraph 7.4.13(iv)(b) of the 7th Central Pay Commission report recommended a non-functional upgradation from Level 8 to Level 9 for certain subordinate engineering cadres after a fixed period in the grade. In Union of India v. Sunil Kumar Rai, 2026 INSC 311, decided on 1 April 2026 by Pankaj Mithal and S. V. N. Bhatti JJ, the Supreme Court held that Junior Engineers of the Border Roads Organisation were entitled to that upgradation, and that the rejection on the ground that their 6th Central Pay Commission entry grade pay had been Rs. 4,200 rather than Rs. 4,800 imposed a condition the recommendation did not contain.

That case is about the subordinate-cadre upgradation, not about the Organised Group A scheme of 24 April 2009. Citing it as authority on the latter is an error.

Distinguished from neighbouring devices

At least four separate instruments in central government service are described as non-functional, and separating them is the most useful thing a reader can take from this article.

Two entries in that table are worth expanding. The Modified Assured Career Progression scheme and non-functional upgradation are mutually exclusive by design: paragraph 3 of the Office Memorandum dated 19 May 2009 applies the MACP scheme to all regularly appointed Group A, B and C civilian employees except officers of the Organised Group A Services. An officer draws one or the other. That is why the MACP benchmark and the assured career progression history are irrelevant to an Organised Group A officer’s file.

And the Non-Functional Selection Grade is a cadre grade, not a personal pay. It is carved out of the cadre strength, capped at 30 per cent of senior duty posts under Office Memorandum No. 22/1/2000-CRD dated 6 June 2000, and filled by seniority subject to rejection of the unfit on entry into the 14th year of service. Non-functional upgradation has no ceiling and takes nothing from the cadre.

A fifth device sits slightly apart. A proforma promotion under the Next Below Rule gives an officer serving outside the cadre the notional promotion he would have received had he remained in it, so that his absence does not prejudice him. That is notional promotion in the parent cadre, with seniority consequences, and it is the one item on this list that is a promotion rather than a fixation of pay.

The clean line to hold in mind: a promotion is an appointment to a post, and carries the post, the duties, the seniority and the standing of an incumbent of the higher grade. Non-functional upgradation, the Non-Functional Selection Grade, a non-functional scale and the Modified Assured Career Progression scheme are all fixations of pay. Everything else about the officer’s position stays where it was.

Points on which published guidance is commonly wrong

The 7th Central Pay Commission did not abolish non-functional upgradation, and did not extend it to the armed forces. It split, and paragraph 14 of the Resolution dated 25 July 2016 ordered status quo. Both halves of that sentence are routinely reported as though they were decisions.

The scheme is not based on residency periods. That was the chairman’s proposal at paragraph 7.3.22, and it was never implemented. Eligibility still turns on the posting of an Indian Administrative Service batch at the centre, subject to the officer independently completing the residency period prescribed for promotion.

It is not decided by a departmental promotion committee. It is a screening committee of three members, each one level above the grade, chaired by the Secretary of the ministry.

The Supreme Court did not give the Central Armed Police Forces full Organised Group A status in 2019. The 2019 judgment produced the upgradation; the “for all purposes” holding, with the cadre review and deputation directions, comes from Sanjay Prakash v. Union of India, 2025 INSC 779, decided on 23 May 2025.

The July 2019 orders name five forces, not seven: the Central Reserve Police Force, Border Security Force, Central Industrial Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and Sashastra Seema Bal, together with the Railway Protection Force. Assam Rifles and the National Security Guard are not among them.

Grade pay of Rs. 5,400 existed in two pay bands under the 6th Central Pay Commission, and the two map to different levels: Rs. 5,400 in Pay Band 2 is Level 9, with an entry pay of Rs. 53,100, and Rs. 5,400 in Pay Band 3 is Level 10, with an entry pay of Rs. 56,100. Any statement that grade pay Rs. 5,400 is Level 9 without naming the pay band has an even chance of being wrong.

The Indian Police Service does get non-functional upgradation, by statute. What it does not get are the two additional increments given to the Indian Administrative Service at the Senior Time Scale, Junior Administrative Grade and Selection Grade.

A penalty does not destroy the entitlement. It postpones it to the day after the penalty period ends.

The upgradation is not drawn twice. When the regular promotion to the same grade arrives, pay is not fixed again.

The compilation dated 15 September 2022 contains a file-number error in its own body, citing the clarification of 25 September 2009 as Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/64/2011-Estt.(RR) at paragraphs 4(xiii) and 4(xv). The appendix on the last page of the same document gives the correct number, AB.14017/64/2008-Estt.(RR). Cite the appendix.

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• Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR)
• Vigilance clearance
• Suspension
• Departmental inquiry
• Major and minor penalty proceedings
• Central Administrative Tribunal
• Armed Forces Tribunal
• Dearness allowance
• House rent allowance
• Transport allowance
• Allowances for central government employees
• Central government pension
• CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021

External references

• Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memoranda archive: https://dopt.gov.in/documents/office-memorandum
• Department of Personnel and Training, Cadre Review Division: https://persmin.gov.in/DOPT/CSWing/CRDivision/4.1.html
• Department of Expenditure, 7th Central Pay Commission report: https://doe.gov.in/report-seventh-central-pay-commission
• Department of Expenditure, 8th Central Pay Commission notification: https://doe.gov.in/files/cenetral-pay_document/8thcpcnotification.pdf
• Ministry of Home Affairs, Indian Police Service (Pay) Rules, 2016: https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-07/IPSPayRules2016_11072024.pdf
• Supreme Court of India, judgment archive: https://main.sci.gov.in/judgments
• The Gazette of India: https://egazette.gov.in/

References

1. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/64/2008-Estt.(RR) dated 24 April 2009, “Non-Functional upgradation for Officers of Organised Group ‘A’ Services in PB-3 and PB-4”, with Annexure I conditions 1 to 10.
2. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. AB-14017/13/2022-Estt.(RR) dated 15 September 2022, consolidated instructions on non-functional upgradation, paragraphs 2 and 4(i) to 4(xviii) and appendix.
3. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/64/2008-Estt.(RR) dated 25 September 2009 (clarifications), and Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/47/2011-Estt.(RR) dated 1 August 2012 (frequently asked questions).
4. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. AB.14017/30/2011-PP.(RR) Vol.III dated 8 May 2025 and dated 26 May 2025 (batches of Indian Administrative Service officers posted at the centre in Levels 13, 14 and 15).
5. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum dated 19 November 2009 (attributes of an Organised Group A Service), and Office Memorandum dated 12 July 2019 (Railway Protection Force and Central Armed Police Force Group A executive cadres treated as Organised Group A Services).
6. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 22/1/2000-CRD dated 6 June 2000, as clarified on 20 December 2000 (Non-Functional Selection Grade, 30 per cent of senior duty posts).
7. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 35034/3/2008-Estt.(D) dated 19 May 2009 (Modified Assured Career Progression Scheme, paragraph 3, exclusion of Organised Group A Services).
8. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 2/11/2017-Estt.(Pay-II) dated 24 November 2017, Note 2 below paragraph 4(d), as clarified on 15 March 2021 (Deputation (Duty) Allowance).
9. Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Resolution No. 1-2/2016-IC dated 25 July 2016, paragraph 14 (status quo on non-functional upgradation), Gazette of India Extraordinary, Part I Section 1.
10. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, paragraphs 7.3.18 to 7.3.26, 7.4.13(iv)(b), 11.22.19 to 11.22.22, and executive summary paragraphs 17.55 and 17.56.
11. CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, notified by G.S.R. 721(E) dated 25 July 2016, Rules 10 and 13; CCS (Revised Pay) (Amendment) Rules, 2017, G.S.R. 592(E) dated 15 June 2017; Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 4-6/2017-IC/E-III(A) dated 28 September 2017 (Level 13 revised to Rs. 1,23,100).
12. Indian Police Service (Pay) Rules, 2016, notified by G.S.R. 910(E) dated 23 September 2016, Schedule, Note 1; Indian Forest Service (Pay) Rules, 2016, Schedule, Note 1.
13. Union of India v. Sri Harananda, (2019) 14 SCC 126, decided 5 February 2019; G.J. Singh v. Union of India, Delhi High Court, decided 3 September 2015; Sanjay Prakash v. Union of India, 2025 INSC 779, decided 23 May 2025.
14. Union of India v. Sunil Kumar Rai, 2026 INSC 311, decided 1 April 2026 (non-functional upgradation from Level 8 to Level 9 under paragraph 7.4.13(iv)(b) of the 7th Central Pay Commission report).
15. 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 (terms of reference).