Old Pension Scheme

The Old Pension Scheme is the non-contributory, defined-benefit pension for central government employees appointed on or before 31 December 2003, under which the government pays 50% of the last drawn basic pay for life, entirely from the budget and with no contribution from the employee. It is governed by the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 2021, notified as G.S.R. 868(E) on 20 December 2021, which replaced the CCS (Pension) Rules, 1972. Alongside the monthly pension it carries dearness relief, a retirement gratuity, a family pension and the General Provident Fund.

The scheme was closed to new entrants with effect from 1 January 2004 by Ministry of Finance notification F. No. 5/7/2003-ECB and PR dated 22 December 2003, which put fresh recruits on the contributory National Pension System. Its population therefore only shrinks. The last employees recruited under it joined in 2003, and the scheme’s remaining life is a matter of paying pensions already earned rather than of accruing new ones.

The Old Pension Scheme is the benchmark against which the two later schemes are measured, because it assures the outcome rather than the input. The employee pays nothing during service and receives half the final basic pay as pension, with the risk of longevity, of inflation and of investment return falling wholly on the government. That structure, and its withdrawal for entrants from 2004, is why the demand for restoration has been among the most persistent in government service, and why the government created the Unified Pension Scheme in 2025 as an assured-pension alternative inside the contributory framework.

This article sets out who is covered, the pension formula and the delinking of the full pension from 33 years of service, the floor and ceiling, the kinds of pension the rules recognise, commutation, the retirement gratuity and its current ceiling, the family pension, dearness relief, the General Provident Fund, the tax treatment, how past pensioners are revised, how a pension is sanctioned and paid, and the restoration debate in which the states, the Reserve Bank of India and the central government have taken positions. Every load-bearing figure is cited to the CCS (Pension) Rules, the governing Office Memorandum, or the tax statute.

Who is covered

The Old Pension Scheme covers central government employees appointed on or before 31 December 2003, and the pensioners who have already retired under it. The dividing line is the date of appointment, not length of service: an employee appointed on 31 December 2003 is on the Old Pension Scheme, and one appointed on 1 January 2004 is on the National Pension System. Ministry of Finance notification F. No. 5/7/2003-ECB and PR dated 22 December 2003 fixed that date. The operative date is 1 January 2004, not 1 April 2004, which is when NPS began operationally and is a common source of error.

The date also decides which body of rules applies. The CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 govern a government servant appointed on or before 31 December 2003, while an employee appointed on or after 1 January 2004 falls under the CCS (Implementation of National Pension System) Rules, 2021. Rule 5 of the 2021 Rules adds the further principle that a claim to pension or gratuity is regulated by the rules in force on the date the government servant retires or dies, so a rule changed after retirement does not reopen a settled pension.

The armed forces were excluded from the 2003 notification and were never brought on to NPS, so their pension arrangements are separate from both schemes and are not the subject of this article. Employees of autonomous bodies, banks, port trusts and public sector undertakings are outside the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 altogether, whatever their own schemes are called.

Pension formula

The pension under the Old Pension Scheme is 50% of emoluments, under Rule 44(1) of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021, for an employee with at least 10 years of qualifying service. It is defined against pay, not against any accumulated corpus, which is what makes the scheme a defined benefit.

Emoluments means basic pay alone. Rule 31 defines it as the basic pay drawn on the date of retirement, meaning the cell of the pay matrix the employee retires on, together with non-practising allowance where it is admissible to a medical officer. Dearness allowance, house rent allowance and transport allowance do not count towards the pension.

Rule 32 supplies the alternative base. Average emoluments is the average of the emoluments drawn during the last 10 months of service, and Rule 44 gives the pensioner whichever of the two produces the higher pension. For an employee who drew the same pay through the whole of the last 10 months, which is the ordinary case, the two are identical. The alternative exists to protect an employee whose pay fell shortly before retirement, for instance on reversion from a higher post.

Because the pension is a percentage of retiring pay rather than a fixed sum, a pay commission that raises the pay matrix raises the pension base for future retirees, and past pensioners are separately re-fixed through the concordance mechanism described below.

Qualifying service and the delinking from 33 years

A full 50% pension needs 10 years of qualifying service, not 33, and has needed only 10 since 1 January 2006. This is the single most misunderstood feature of the scheme, and the chronology of the change matters because three separate orders were involved.

Qualifying service is governed by Rules 11 to 30 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021: broadly, continuous service from the date of appointment, excluding non-qualifying leave and interruptions. Until 2006, a full pension of 50% of emoluments required 33 years of it, and an employee retiring with less had the pension reduced proportionately.

The Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum dated 2 September 2008 rewrote the calculation in paragraphs 5.2 and 5.3, so that an employee who becomes entitled to pension on completing the minimum qualifying service draws 50% of emoluments or of average emoluments, whichever is more beneficial. Paragraph 5.4, though, made that effective only from 2 September 2008, and a further Office Memorandum dated 11 December 2008 clarified that for an employee retiring on or after 1 January 2006 the pension would still be scaled to 33 years.

Office Memorandum No. 38/37/08-P&PW(A) dated 10 December 2009 is the order that actually delinked it. In partial modification of the earlier instructions, it decided that the linkage of full pension with 33 years of qualifying service is dispensed with, with effect from 1 January 2006 instead of 2 September 2008, and modified paragraph 5.4 accordingly. Attributing the delinking to the 2008 Office Memorandum reverses the position that order actually took.

Pre-2006 pensioners waited longer still. The benefit was extended to them by a Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum of even number dated 6 April 2016, which decided that the revised pension of a pre-2006 pensioner shall in no case be lower than 50% of the corresponding pay in the fitment table, delinked from 33 years and revised with effect from 1 January 2006.

The 33-year figure survives in exactly one place: it is the maximum qualifying service counted for the retirement gratuity under Rule 45, which is 66 completed six-monthly periods. It has no application to the amount of the monthly pension.

Minimum and maximum pension

The pension is bounded at Rs. 9,000 a month at the floor and Rs. 1,25,000 a month at the ceiling. The minimum of Rs. 9,000 was set by the 7th Central Pay Commission with effect from 1 January 2016 and is half the minimum pay of Rs. 18,000. The maximum of Rs. 1,25,000 is 50% of the highest pay in the government, Rs. 2,50,000.

Both bounds apply to the basic pension before dearness relief and before the old-age additions. A pensioner on the Rs. 9,000 floor with dearness relief at 60%, the rate in force from 1 January 2026, draws Rs. 9,000 plus Rs. 5,400, or Rs. 14,400 a month. A pensioner at the Rs. 1,25,000 ceiling can exceed it in total drawings once dearness relief and the age-related addition are applied, because the ceiling binds the basic pension only.

The same Rs. 9,000 floor applies to a family pension. The ceiling on an ordinary family pension is Rs. 75,000 a month, being 30% of Rs. 2,50,000. Between floor and ceiling the pension is simply half the retiring basic pay. For the detail, see minimum and maximum pension.

Kinds of pension

The CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 recognise several distinct pensions, all computed at the same 50% of emoluments but triggered by different events. The kind of pension decides the date it begins and the conditions attached, not the amount.

Superannuation pension is granted under Rule 33 to an employee who retires on attaining the prescribed age of retirement, which is 60 for most central civil posts. Retiring pension is granted under Rule 34 on voluntary retirement or on retirement before superannuation, most commonly after 20 years of qualifying service. Invalid pension under Rule 39 is granted where a medical authority certifies that the employee is permanently incapacitated for further service. Compensation pension covers discharge on abolition of the post. Rule 40 provides a compulsory retirement pension where an employee is compulsorily retired as a penalty, at not less than two-thirds of the pension otherwise admissible, and Rule 41 provides a compassionate allowance at not more than two-thirds where an employee is dismissed or removed and the case deserves special consideration.

Rule 42 carries the government’s own power to retire an employee who has completed 30 years of qualifying service, which is distinct from the power under Fundamental Rule 56(j) that runs on age rather than service. Both are separate from premature retirement sought by the employee.

An employee who retires with less than 10 years of qualifying service is not eligible for a monthly pension at all, but is not left with nothing. Rule 44(2) gives a service gratuity instead, a one-time lump sum of half a month’s emoluments for each completed six-monthly period of qualifying service, with no monthly payment thereafter. The retirement gratuity under Rule 45 is a separate benefit and needs only five years.

Worked example

An employee retiring at superannuation on a last basic pay of Rs. 1,00,000 with more than 33 years of service draws a basic pension of Rs. 50,000 a month, plus dearness relief of Rs. 30,000 at the 60% rate in force from 1 January 2026, giving Rs. 80,000 in the first month.

If that employee commutes the maximum 40%, the commuted portion is Rs. 20,000 of monthly pension. The lump sum is Rs. 20,000 multiplied by the commutation factor and by 12. The factor for retirement on superannuation at 60 is 8.194, because the table appended to the CCS (Commutation of Pension) Rules, 1981 is keyed on age next birthday, so the lump sum is Rs. 19,66,560, received once at retirement.

The monthly pension is then reduced to Rs. 30,000 for 15 years, after which the full Rs. 50,000 is restored automatically. Dearness relief throughout those 15 years is calculated on the full Rs. 50,000, not on the reduced Rs. 30,000, so the first-month drawings after commutation are Rs. 30,000 plus Rs. 30,000 of dearness relief, or Rs. 60,000, alongside the lump sum.

The retirement gratuity is paid separately. At Rs. 1,00,000 basic pay plus 60% dearness allowance, emoluments for gratuity are Rs. 1,60,000, and 16.5 times that is Rs. 26,40,000, which exceeds the Rs. 25 lakh ceiling, so the gratuity is Rs. 25,00,000. The General Provident Fund balance is paid out on top of that. The retiring employee therefore receives four distinct benefits, a monthly pension, a commutation lump sum, a gratuity and a provident-fund corpus, none of which depends on a market return.

Additional pension in old age

Rule 44(6) of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 raises the pension automatically as the pensioner ages, at 20% of the basic pension on attaining 80 years, 30% at 85, 40% at 90, 50% at 95, and 100% at 100, so the basic pension doubles for a centenarian.

The addition runs from the first day of the month in which the pensioner reaches the relevant age, and it carries dearness relief on the enhanced figure rather than on the pre-addition pension. A family pensioner receives the same additions, computed on the recipient’s own age rather than on the age the deceased would have reached.

The addition is not subject to the Rs. 1,25,000 ceiling, which binds the basic pension as fixed at retirement. A pensioner whose basic pension is at the ceiling and who reaches 80 therefore draws Rs. 1,25,000 plus 20%, before dearness relief. For the detail, see additional pension in old age.

Commutation of pension

Up to 40% of the monthly pension may be commuted, exchanged for a lump sum at retirement, under the CCS (Commutation of Pension) Rules, 1981. The lump sum is the commuted portion of the monthly pension multiplied by an age-based commutation factor and by 12.

The factor comes from the table appended to those rules, and the table is keyed on age next birthday rather than current age. The factor shown against age 60 is 8.287 and against age 61 is 8.194. An employee retiring on superannuation at 60 commutes as age next birthday 61 and therefore takes 8.194, which is why that is the figure usually seen in a superannuation calculation. For the full table, see commutation factor table.

The reduction is temporary. The commuted portion is restored 15 years from the date the reduction took effect, automatically and without an application, so a pensioner who commutes at 60 has the full pension back at 75. This is a structural difference from a commercial annuity, where a lump sum taken at the start is never restored. See restoration of commuted pension and commutation of pension.

Retirement gratuity

The retirement gratuity is one-fourth of emoluments for each completed six-monthly period of qualifying service, subject to a maximum of 16.5 times emoluments under Rule 45 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021, and to a monetary ceiling of Rs. 25 lakh from 1 January 2024. The first proviso to Rule 45(1) still reads twenty lakh rupees; the Rs. 25 lakh ceiling was granted by Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum No. 28/03/2024-P&PW(B)/Gratuity/9559 dated 30 May 2024. It is a lump sum paid over and above the monthly pension and needs a minimum of five years of qualifying service.

Emoluments here means basic pay plus dearness allowance on the date of retirement, a wider base than the pension base of basic pay alone. The 16.5 multiple is where the 33-year figure reappears: 33 years is 66 completed six-monthly periods, and 66 multiplied by one-fourth is 16.5.

The monetary ceiling rose recently and is often quoted at the superseded figure. It was Rs. 20 lakh under the 7th Central Pay Commission, which recommended that it increase by 25% whenever dearness allowance rises by 50%. Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 1/1/2024-E-II(B) dated 12 March 2024 raised dearness allowance from 46% to 50% with effect from 1 January 2024, and Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum No. 28/03/2024-P&PW(B)/Gratuity/9559 dated 30 May 2024 accordingly enhanced the retirement and death gratuity ceiling to Rs. 25 lakh with effect from 1 January 2024. The current ceiling is Rs. 25 lakh, not the Rs. 20 lakh still widely repeated. For the wider treatment, see gratuity for central government employees.

Family pension

The ordinary family pension is 30% of the last pay and the enhanced family pension is 50%, under Rule 50 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021. It is paid on the death of a serving employee or of a pensioner, to the eligible family member, usually the spouse, and then to eligible children and dependants in the order the rule fixes. The minimum is the same Rs. 9,000 a month.

The enhanced 50% rate runs for a limited period before stepping down to the ordinary 30%, and the period depends on when the death occurs. On death in service, the enhanced rate is paid for 10 years with no upper age limit, a position effective from 1 January 2006. On death after retirement, it is paid for 7 years, or until the date on which the deceased would have attained 67 years, whichever is earlier, and it cannot exceed the pension the deceased was actually drawing.

The age of 67 replaced 65 by Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum No. 1/3/2015-P&PW(E) dated 1 October 2019, so any statement of the older figure is out of date. The maximum ordinary family pension is Rs. 75,000 a month, 30% of the highest pay of Rs. 2,50,000. For the detail, see family pension.

Dearness relief

Dearness relief is paid on the Old Pension Scheme pension at 60% from 1 January 2026, the same rate as the dearness allowance of serving employees, and is revised twice a year on the same cycle. It exists to protect the pension against price inflation, which a fixed nominal pension would not survive over a retirement of 25 years or more.

Dearness relief is calculated on the full, un-commuted basic pension, not on the reduced pension after commutation. An employee who commutes 40% still receives dearness relief computed on the whole original figure throughout the 15-year reduction, which materially softens the cost of commuting and is a further respect in which the scheme outperforms a commercial annuity, where commutation would shrink every future increase.

General Provident Fund

An Old Pension Scheme employee also subscribes to the General Provident Fund, a defined-contribution provident fund established under the General Provident Fund (Central Services) Rules, 1960, which sits on top of the defined-benefit pension. The National Pension System has no equivalent.

The employee subscribes a part of pay each month during service, the balance earns interest, and the whole is paid out with interest at retirement. The rate is declared quarterly by the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance. It has been 7.1% a year since the quarter beginning 1 April 2020 and is 7.1% for the quarter 1 April to 30 June 2026, under quarterly resolution F. No. 5(3)-B(PD)/2023.

The General Provident Fund is a substantial part of why the Old Pension Scheme is worth more than the pension percentage alone suggests. An employee on it receives both the assured 50% pension and a separate accumulated corpus, whereas an NPS employee has only the market-linked corpus, 40% of which must be annuitised at exit. The absence of a General Provident Fund under NPS is a recurring theme in the case made for restoring the Old Pension Scheme.

Tax treatment

The tax treatment splits three ways, and the three parts are taxed under different heads. The monthly pension is taxable as salary under Section 17 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, in the hands of the retiree, and carries the salary standard deduction.

The commuted lump sum is fully exempt for a government employee under Section 10(10A)(i) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, with no monetary ceiling. The retirement gratuity is likewise fully exempt under Section 10(10)(i), also with no ceiling; the Rs. 20 lakh cap on gratuity exemption applies to non-government employees and does not touch a central government retiree.

A family pension is taxed differently, because it is received by someone other than the person who earned it. It falls under income from other sources rather than salary, and it carries its own deduction under Section 57(iia) of one-third of the pension subject to Rs. 15,000 under the old regime. The Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024 raised that ceiling to Rs. 25,000 for a taxpayer under Section 115BAC, the new regime, with effect from assessment year 2025-26. The salary standard deduction does not apply to a family pension, and applying it is a common error. For the wider treatment, see income tax for government employees.

Revision of past pensioners

An Old Pension Scheme pensioner does not stay frozen on the pay of the year of retirement. When a pay commission takes effect, the pensions of earlier retirees are re-fixed against the revised pay structure, so that a past retiree’s pension keeps a defined relationship to the pay of a serving employee in the corresponding grade.

The 7th Central Pay Commission re-fixed pre-2016 pensions by two routes and gave the pensioner whichever produced more. The first is the pre-revised basic pension multiplied by the fitment factor of 2.57. The second is notional pay fixation, in which the pay drawn at retirement is stepped forward through each intervening pay commission into the corresponding cell of the current pay matrix, and 50% of that notional pay is taken as the revised pension.

The second route is operated through concordance tables issued by the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, which map every old pay stage to its notional current cell. The effect is that a pensioner who retired decades ago on a small pay now draws a pension re-based to the current structure. The 8th Central Pay Commission is required to review the pension framework, so a further re-fixation on the same pattern is expected when it reports.

Sanction and payment

An Old Pension Scheme pension is sanctioned in advance of retirement, not applied for afterwards. The process begins about a year before the date of retirement, with the head of office verifying qualifying service and the employee submitting the pension application in Form 6, ordinarily through the Bhavishya portal, which tracks each stage and is mandatory across central civil ministries.

The Pay and Accounts Office issues the Pension Payment Order on the strength of the completed papers, and the Central Pension Accounting Office authorises payment through the pension-disbursing bank. The Pension Payment Order is the operative instrument: it fixes the pension, the commuted portion, the date of restoration and the family pension payable on the pensioner’s death.

Where the papers cannot be finalised in time, Rule 62 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 requires a provisional pension to be sanctioned so that the retiree is not left unpaid, and Rules 67 to 69 govern the assessment and recovery of government dues from the gratuity. Rule 65 makes interest payable on a pension or gratuity delayed for administrative reasons, at the General Provident Fund rate of 7.1%; no interest is payable where the delay was caused by the employee’s own failure to submit the papers or clear dues.

Closure in 2004 and the restoration debate

The Old Pension Scheme was closed to new entrants because its liability was unfunded during service and fell wholly on future budgets. As a non-contributory defined benefit paid from current revenue, the cost grew with the number of retirees and with longevity, and nothing was set aside against it while the employee served. The National Pension System converted that open-ended liability into a defined contribution the government pays during service and owes nothing beyond.

The withdrawal of the assured pension produced a sustained demand for restoration, and five states acted on it. Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh announced a reversion to the Old Pension Scheme for their own employees in 2022 and 2023. The rollback has been obstructed by a specific legal point rather than a general one: there is no provision under the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 2013 or the regulations made under it by which an accumulated NPS corpus can be refunded and deposited back to a state government.

The Reserve Bank of India put a figure on the cost. A study in its September 2023 Bulletin, “Fiscal Cost of Reverting to the Old Pension Scheme by the Indian States: An Assessment”, estimated that the cumulative fiscal burden of a reversion by all states over 2023 to 2084 could reach 4.5 times that of NPS, with the additional burden running at 0.9% of gross domestic product a year by 2060. The Bulletin carried the usual caveat that the views are the authors’ own. The Reserve Bank repeated the caution in “State Finances: A Study of Budgets of 2023-24”, released on 11 December 2023, which described the shift back as compromising the interests of future generations. The Vaidyanathan Committee had reached a comparable range in 2022, estimating the state pension burden at four to five times higher under the Old Pension Scheme than under NPS.

The central government did not restore the Old Pension Scheme. Its formal response was the Unified Pension Scheme, operative from 1 April 2025, which assures a pension inside the funded, contributory framework rather than returning to a non-contributory one.

Comparison with NPS and the Unified Pension Scheme

The Old Pension Scheme remains the most generous of the three for the employee and the most expensive for the government, which is the same fact stated from two sides. It costs the employee nothing and assures the outcome; NPS costs the employee 10% and assures nothing; the Unified Pension Scheme costs the employee 10% and assures an outcome, but a narrower one reached through a funded corpus.

The Unified Pension Scheme is the closest of the three to the Old Pension Scheme in what it promises, but it is not the same promise. It assures 50% of the last 12 months’ average basic pay rather than of the last drawn pay, requires 25 years of qualifying service for the full rate rather than 10, and is funded rather than paid from current revenue. Its enrolment window closed on 30 November 2025. The government’s contribution to the individual corpus under it is 10%, not the 14% it pays under plain NPS, a figure frequently stated wrongly. For a fuller treatment, see NPS vs OPS vs UPS.

Related Articles

• Central government pension
• CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021
• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• NPS vs OPS vs UPS
• Qualifying service
• Minimum and maximum pension
• Superannuation
• Retiring pension
• Invalid pension
• Compensation pension
• Compassionate allowance
• Service gratuity
• Voluntary retirement
• Premature retirement
• Retirement age of central government employees
• Commutation of pension
• Commutation factor table
• Restoration of commuted pension
• Additional pension in old age
• Family pension
• Gratuity for central government employees
• Death gratuity
• General Provident Fund
• Dearness relief
• Dearness allowance
• Bhavishya portal
• Central Pension Accounting Office
• Interest on delayed pension
• Notional pay fixation
• Concordance table
• Fitment factor
• Pay matrix
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• 6th Central Pay Commission
• Central government employees in India
• Technical resignation
• CCS (Implementation of NPS) Rules
• House rent allowance
• Income tax for government employees
• Standard deduction
• Take-home salary of central government employees
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare
• Department of Expenditure
• 7th CPC salary calculator

External references

• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare
• Full pension: delinking from 33 years of qualifying service (DoPPW)
• Pensioners’ Portal
• Bhavishya, pension sanction and payment tracking
• Central Pension Accounting Office
• Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance
• Reserve Bank of India Bulletin
• Income Tax Department

References

1. Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 2021, notified as G.S.R. 868(E) on 20 December 2021: Rule 5 (rules in force at retirement), Rules 11 to 30 (qualifying service), Rule 31 (emoluments), Rule 32 (average emoluments), Rules 33, 34, 39, 40 and 41 (kinds of pension), Rule 42 (retirement after 30 years of service), Rule 44 (amount of pension and service gratuity), Rule 44(6) (additional pension in old age), Rule 45 (retirement and death gratuity), Rule 50 (family pension), Rule 62 (provisional pension), Rule 65 (interest on delayed payment), Rules 67 to 69 (government dues).
2. Ministry of Finance, Department of Economic Affairs, notification F. No. 5/7/2003-ECB and PR dated 22 December 2003, introducing the New Pension System for central government employees joining on or after 1 January 2004 and closing the Old Pension Scheme to them.
3. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 38/37/08-P&PW(A) dated 10 December 2009, dispensing with the linkage of full pension to 33 years of qualifying service with effect from 1 January 2006, in partial modification of paragraph 5.4 of the Office Memorandum of 2 September 2008 and of the Office Memorandum of 11 December 2008.
4. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum of even number dated 6 April 2016, extending the delinking to pre-2006 pensioners.
5. Department of Expenditure, Office Memorandum No. 1/1/2024-E-II(B) dated 12 March 2024, raising dearness allowance from 46% to 50% with effect from 1 January 2024.
6. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 28/03/2024-P&PW(B)/Gratuity/9559 dated 30 May 2024, enhancing the retirement and death gratuity ceiling to Rs. 25 lakh with effect from 1 January 2024.
7. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 1/3/2015-P&PW(E) dated 1 October 2019, raising the enhanced family-pension age limit from 65 to 67.
8. Central Civil Services (Commutation of Pension) Rules, 1981, and the commutation table appended to them, keyed on age next birthday, on commutation up to 40% and restoration after 15 years.
9. General Provident Fund (Central Services) Rules, 1960, and Department of Economic Affairs quarterly interest-rate resolution F. No. 5(3)-B(PD)/2023, dated 3 July 2026, fixing 7.1% per annum for the quarter 1 July to 30 September 2026.
10. Income-tax Act, 1961: Section 17 (pension as salary), Section 10(10A)(i) (commuted pension), Section 10(10)(i) (gratuity), Section 57(iia) (family-pension deduction), and Section 115BAC as amended by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024.
11. Reserve Bank of India, “Fiscal Cost of Reverting to the Old Pension Scheme by the Indian States: An Assessment”, RBI Bulletin, September 2023, and “State Finances: A Study of Budgets of 2023-24”, released 11 December 2023.