Pay band

A pay band was a running salary range notified in column 5 of the First Schedule to the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2008, gazette notification G.S.R. 622(E) dated 29 August 2008, within which a central government employee’s pay moved from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2015, read together with the grade pay of the post to give basic pay. Four bands ran from Pay Band-1 at Rs. 5,200 to 20,200 up to Pay Band-4 at Rs. 37,400 to 67,000.

Pay bands are not a component of central government pay today. The 7th Central Pay Commission abolished the band and the grade pay together, and the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 put the 18 levels of the pay matrix in their place with effect from 1 January 2016, so basic pay is now one printed cell and nothing is added to it.

The structure still decides money. The pay drawn in a band on 31 December 2015 selects the concordance table that revises the pension of a pre-2016 retiree, a state government or autonomous body that never adopted the matrix continues to advertise posts by band and grade pay, and every service record for the decade from 2006 states pay as two figures rather than one.

What a pay band was

A pay band was a range, not a rate. Rule 3(5) of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2008 defines pay in the pay band as the pay drawn in the running pay bands specified in column 5 of the First Schedule, and Rule 4 provides that the pay band and grade pay of every post is the one specified against it in columns 5 and 6 of that Schedule. A band therefore named a floor and a ceiling; it did not name what anyone drew.

Rank sat outside the band. Rule 3(6) defines grade pay as the fixed amount corresponding to the pre-revised pay scale of the post, and Rule 3(8) defines basic pay in the revised structure as the pay drawn in the prescribed pay band plus the applicable grade pay, excluding special pay and similar additions. Because several grades shared one band, the band could not distinguish a Lower Division Clerk from a Section Officer, and the grade pay had to.

That division of labour is the whole design. The 6th Central Pay Commission, which reported on 24 March 2008, collapsed the 34 scales of the 5th Central Pay Commission into four broad ranges, then restored the hierarchy the collapse had erased by bolting a grade pay onto each post. One instrument therefore carried two ideas at once, and reading an employee’s pay meant reading both.

The four pay bands and the -1S scale

Four running bands covered every post below the Higher Administrative Grade, with a holding scale beneath them and three fixed scales above. The figures below are as notified in the First Schedule to the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2008, in rupees per month.

Three of those band floors were raised before notification. The Commission had recommended Pay Band-1 at Rs. 4,860 to 20,200, Pay Band-2 at Rs. 8,700 to 34,800 and Pay Band-4 at Rs. 39,200 to 67,000; the Government notified Rs. 5,200, Rs. 9,300 and Rs. 37,400 respectively, lifting the two lower floors and lowering the fourth. Pay Band-3 alone went through unchanged, which is why minimum pay settled at Rs. 7,000 a month rather than the Rs. 6,660 the Commission had computed.

The -1S scale was a transit arrangement, not a career band. Note 1(a) to Rule 7 fixed Group D employees in it initially, with the appropriate grade pay of Rs. 1,300, Rs. 1,400, Rs. 1,600 or Rs. 1,650 against the pre-revised S-1, S-2, S-2A and S-3 scales, and Note 1(b) required those without the revised minimum qualifications to be retrained, preferably within six months, and then placed in Pay Band-1 on grade pay Rs. 1,800 with effect from 1 January 2006. The scale is routinely described as carrying no grade pay, which the Schedule contradicts on its face.

The three top rungs carried no band at all. The Higher Administrative Grade Plus of Rs. 75,500 to 80,000 moved by a 3% annual increment inside its own scale, and the apex scale of Rs. 80,000 and the Cabinet Secretary’s Rs. 90,000 were single fixed figures, because nothing progressed above them. For those posts Rule 3(8) says basic pay means the pay in the prescribed scale, with no grade pay component.

Basic pay as pay in the band plus grade pay

Basic pay under the 6th CPC was an addition of two figures, and every allowance ran on the sum. An employee drawing Rs. 12,090 in Pay Band-2 on grade pay Rs. 4,200 had a basic pay of Rs. 16,290, and dearness allowance, house rent allowance, transport allowance and the rest were computed on Rs. 16,290, never on the band figure alone.

The order of the two figures never varied. The band figure moved every year by the increment; the grade pay stood still until a promotion or a financial upgradation attached a different one. So an employee could name the grade pay from the post alone, but had to consult the service book to name the pay in the band.

This is the feature the 7th CPC removed, and the reason it gave for removing it. Reading two numbers, comparing two employees across overlapping bands, and fixing pay on promotion in two steps produced arithmetic that a drawing and disbursing officer had to perform rather than look up. The pay matrix answers the same questions by printing the figure in a cell.

Entry pay for a direct recruit

Section II of Part A of the First Schedule notified a single entry pay for each grade pay, and a direct recruit appointed on or after 1 January 2006 started there rather than at the floor of the band. The figures below are that Schedule.

Only the lowest grade pay in each band started at the band floor. Grade pay Rs. 4,600 in Pay Band-2 carried an entry pay of Rs. 17,140, not the Rs. 13,900 that adding Rs. 4,600 to the Rs. 9,300 floor would give, because the Schedule set the pay in the band for that grade at Rs. 12,540. Any conversion table built by adding a grade pay to a band minimum is wrong for eleven of these fifteen rows.

The table has one gap. Section II notifies no entry pay for grade pay Rs. 5,400 in Pay Band-2, although Section I attaches that grade pay to the pre-revised S-15 scale in that band, and the 7th CPC had to interpolate a figure of Rs. 20,280 to build the level that replaced it. The omission is the first sign of the overlap described below.

Fixation into a band on 1 January 2006

Rule 7(1)(A)(i) fixed pay in the band by multiplying the existing basic pay as on 1 January 2006 by 1.86 and rounding the result up to the next multiple of Rs. 10, after which the grade pay of the post was added. Take an employee on the pre-revised S-12 scale drawing Rs. 6,500: the pay in Pay Band-2 becomes Rs. 12,090, the grade pay of Rs. 4,200 is added, and revised basic pay is Rs. 16,290 from 1 January 2006.

Two safeguards sat inside the same rule. Rule 7(1)(A)(ii) fixed pay at the minimum of the revised band wherever the product of 1.86 fell below that minimum, which is what carried the lowest S-4 stages up to the Pay Band-1 floor of Rs. 5,200. The bunching proviso granted one increment for every two consecutive pre-revised stages that landed on the same figure in the band, computed on the pay in the band alone, with grade pay excluded from that calculation.

The multiple itself was a Government decision, not a Commission recommendation. Paragraph 2.2.21 of the report proposed 1.74, being basic pay plus the 74% dearness allowance that would have been payable had the 2004 merger of 50% dearness allowance into dearness pay not happened. The Government kept the merger and paid the 24% dearness allowance then in force on the merged base, which gives 1.86, and every band floor in the notified Schedule is the Commission’s own floor recomputed at that higher multiple. The fitment factor article traces both.

Arrears followed 32 months later. Revised pay was effective from 1 January 2006 but drawn from September 2008, and Rule 14 required the arrears to be paid in two instalments, the first restricted to 40% of the total and the balance 60% in the next financial year.

The increment inside a band

Rule 9 set the annual increment at 3% of the sum of the pay in the pay band and the grade pay, rounded off to the next multiple of Rs. 10, added to the pay in the band. The employee on Rs. 12,090 plus grade pay Rs. 4,200 draws 3% of Rs. 16,290, which is Rs. 488.70, rounded to Rs. 490, so the pay in the band becomes Rs. 12,580 and basic pay Rs. 16,780. The grade pay is untouched by the increment even though it enters the computation of it.

Rule 10 moved every increment onto one date. From 2006 the annual increment fell on 1 July for every employee, with those completing six months or more in the revised structure as on that date eligible, replacing increments that had previously fallen on the anniversary of appointment. The first increment after the January 2006 fixation was granted on 1 July 2006 for employees whose date of next increment fell between 1 July 2006 and 1 January 2007, and a proviso gave an immediate increment on 1 January 2006 to anyone who had been at the maximum of the pre-revised scale for more than a year.

One provision in Rule 9 has been read out of the record. The rule notified variable rates of increment of 3% and 4% inside Pay Band-3, with the higher rate available to not more than 20% of the strength of officers in that band, a narrower version of the performance-linked increment the Commission had proposed at 2.5% and 3.5%. The 3% rate is the one that survived into the pay matrix, where each cell is 3% above the one below it.

The maximum of a band

The second proviso to Rule 10 provides that an employee who reaches the maximum of a pay band is placed in the next higher pay band after one year of reaching that maximum, with the benefit of one increment at the time of placement, and continues to move in the higher band until pay in the band reaches the maximum of Pay Band-4, after which no further increment is granted. This is the provision that made the structure a running one, and it has no counterpart in the pay matrix.

The consequence is a grade pay drawing pay from a band above its own. An employee at the Pay Band-1 ceiling of Rs. 20,200 on grade pay Rs. 2,800 moves into Pay Band-2 a year later and takes one increment of 3% on Rs. 23,000, which is Rs. 690, so the pay in the band becomes Rs. 20,890 inside a band whose floor is Rs. 9,300. The grade pay stays at Rs. 2,800, because Rule 13 attaches a new grade pay only on promotion.

Only Pay Band-4 had a hard stop. Its maximum of Rs. 67,000 ended increments altogether, since there was no fifth band to move into and the Higher Administrative Grade was reached by promotion rather than by stagnation. Under the present structure the equivalent stop is the last cell of a pay level, where the increment ends. Paragraph 5.1.39 of the 7th CPC report records that the spans of the lower levels were kept at 40 years so that no stagnation takes place, which is the same problem answered without a second band.

Promotion from one band to the next

Rule 13(i) fixed pay on promotion in two steps: one increment of 3% of the sum of the pay in the pay band and the existing grade pay, rounded to the next multiple of Rs. 10 and added to the pay in the band, followed by the grade pay of the promotion post. Where the promotion also crossed into a higher band, the same method applied, with one addition: if the pay in the band after the increment was less than the minimum of the higher band, the pay in the band was stepped up to that minimum.

The stepping-up clause did the real work. An employee drawing Rs. 14,000 in Pay Band-2 on grade pay Rs. 5,400, promoted to grade pay Rs. 6,600 in Pay Band-3, takes an increment of 3% on Rs. 19,400, which is Rs. 582 rounded to Rs. 590, giving Rs. 14,590 in the band. That figure is below the Pay Band-3 floor of Rs. 15,600, so pay in the band is stepped up to Rs. 15,600 and basic pay becomes Rs. 22,200. Without the clause the promotion would have placed an officer inside a band at a figure the band did not contain.

Promotion out of the bands had its own sub-rule and its own ceiling. Rule 13(ii) provides that on promotion from Pay Band-4 to the Higher Administrative Grade Plus, one increment is added in the manner prescribed in Rule 9, the pay in the band and the existing grade pay are then added together, and the resulting figure becomes basic pay in that scale, not exceeding Rs. 80,000, with pay plus non-practising allowance not exceeding Rs. 85,000 for those in receipt of it. The two-part structure ends at that point, which is why the scales above carry no grade pay.

The same two-step shape governs promotion today. Rule 13 of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 grants one increment in the level held and then places the employee at the equal or next higher cell of the promoted level, and pay fixation on promotion turns on the option under FR 22(I)(a)(1) rather than on any band arithmetic.

The overlap between bands

Bands overlapped by design, and the overlap is what the 7th CPC found unworkable. Pay Band-2 ran to Rs. 34,800 while Pay Band-3 began at Rs. 15,600, so more than Rs. 19,000 of range was common to both, and an employee near the top of the lower band drew more pay in the band than a colleague newly promoted into the higher one. The grade pay was the only figure that recorded which of them was senior.

Grade pay Rs. 5,400 turned that geometry into a dispute. Section I of Part A of the First Schedule attaches Rs. 5,400 both to the pre-revised S-15 scale in Pay Band-2 and to the S-16, S-17 and Group A entry scales in Pay Band-3, so two employees on the identical grade pay sat in bands whose floors differed by Rs. 6,300 a month. A promotion between the two moved the band without moving the grade pay, which left Rule 13(i) with no higher grade pay to grant and made the fixation an argument rather than a calculation.

The 7th CPC resolved it by giving each placement a level of its own. Grade pay Rs. 5,400 in Pay Band-2 became Level 9 with an entry cell of Rs. 53,100, grade pay Rs. 5,400 in Pay Band-3 became Level 10 with an entry cell of Rs. 56,100, and the non-functional upgradation that lifts a Section Officer runs between them. Because levels do not overlap, the stepping up of pay claims that the overlap generated cannot arise in the same form.

Conversion of each band to pay matrix levels

Every grade pay in the four bands became exactly one level of the pay matrix, and the arithmetic is reproducible. The 7th CPC took the 6th CPC entry pay from Section II of the First Schedule, multiplied it by the index of rationalisation assigned to the level, and rounded to the nearest hundred rupees. The table below is a salary-calculator.in derivation, setting the notified entry pay against the index and the resulting first cell so that each row can be checked.

The Level 13 row was corrected after notification. Ministry of Finance Resolution No. 1-2/2016-IC dated 16 May 2017 raised the Level 13 index from 2.57 to 2.67, and the CCS (Revised Pay) (Amendment) Rules, 2017, notified as G.S.R. 592(E) on 15 June 2017 with effect from 1 January 2016, substituted the column, moving the entry cell from Rs. 1,18,500 to Rs. 1,23,100. Any conversion chart still showing Rs. 1,18,500 against grade pay Rs. 8,700 predates that substitution.

Grade pay Rs. 12,000 has no row. It was the ceiling of the Modified Assured Career Progression scheme rather than a recruitment grade, and the levels above 14 are keyed to the Higher Administrative Grade, the Higher Administrative Grade Plus, the apex scale and the Cabinet Secretary’s scale, which never carried a grade pay to convert.

Abolition on 1 January 2016

The CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, notified as G.S.R. 721(E) on 25 July 2016 with effect from 1 January 2016, abolished the pay band and the grade pay together and put the pay matrix in their place. Rule 7 of those rules multiplied each employee’s existing basic pay, meaning the pay in the band plus grade pay as on 31 December 2015, by the fitment factor of 2.57, then placed the product at the equal or next higher cell of the level corresponding to the grade pay held.

The two multipliers of that changeover are routinely confused. The fitment factor of 2.57 applied to a person, once, on 1 January 2016; the index of rationalisation applied to a level, once, when the matrix was drawn. No employee was ever multiplied by 2.62 or 2.72, and the two figures coincide only at Levels 1 to 5.

Classification followed the same route out. Department of Personnel and Training notification S.O. 946(E) dated 9 April 2009 had grouped every central civil post by its grade pay, with Group B covering grade pay Rs. 4,200 to Rs. 5,400 in Pay Band-2 and Group A beginning at grade pay Rs. 5,400 in Pay Band-3. Notification S.O. 3964(E) dated 9 August 2018 replaced that with classification by level, at Levels 1 to 5 for Group C, Levels 6 to 9 for Group B and Levels 10 to 18 for Group A, which preserves the old boundaries because the levels were built from the grade pays.

Pay bands in the pension of a pre-2016 retiree

The band and grade pay held at retirement decide the revised pension of everyone who retired on or before 31 December 2015. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum F. No. 38/37/2016-P&PW(A) dated 12 May 2017 set the notional-pay method, and the Office Memorandum of even number dated 6 July 2017 issued the 58 concordance tables that implement it, each keyed to one pre-revised scale or grade pay.

The mechanism is a lookup, not a multiplication. The pay drawn in the band at retirement selects a row, the row carries a notional pay as on 1 January 2016 in the corresponding level of the pay matrix, and revised pension is 50% of that notional pay with family pension at 30%, each compared with the pension already revised by the 2.57 multiple and the higher of the two granted.

A pensioner therefore cannot begin a revision claim without the two figures. The Pension Payment Order records the pay drawn at retirement in the two-part form, and a revision computed from the wrong table produces the wrong notional pay and the wrong pension for life.

Pay bands outside the central civil services

The abolition binds Union civil posts and nothing else. Rule 2(1) of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 applies those rules to persons appointed to civil services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union whose pay is debitable to Civil Estimates, and Rule 2(2) then excludes eight categories outright, including persons employed on contract and pensioners re-employed after retirement.

Parallel services moved on parallel instruments. The Indian Administrative Service, the Indian Police Service and the Indian Forest Service came onto the matrix through the All India Service pay rules of 2016, and railway employees through the Railway Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, each mirroring the CCS structure without being it.

A body outside all of those keeps whatever it last notified. A state government, a university, an autonomous body or a public sector undertaking adopts a central pay revision by its own order, and where no such order has issued the post continues to carry a pay band and a grade pay. A grade pay quoted in a recruitment advertisement issued today is therefore a live figure in that organisation and a historical one in the Central Government.

Pay band, pay scale and pay level

Three terms from three structures are used interchangeably and mean different things. A pay scale was the 5th CPC form, a narrow range with a stated increment written as 6500-200-10500, one scale to a grade. A pay band was the 6th CPC form, a wide range shared by several grades and read with a grade pay. A pay level is the 7th CPC form, a column of printed cells in the pay matrix, one level to a grade, with nothing added to the cell.

The loose usage runs in one direction. A recruitment notice describing a post as “Level 6, grade pay Rs. 4,200, Pay Band-2” is naming one grade three times over, once in the current structure and twice in the one that ended on 31 December 2015. Nothing is paid on the last two descriptions; they identify the grade and select the concordance table for a pensioner.

The distinction matters most in a claim. An arrears or fixation claim for service before 2016 is computed on the band and the grade pay under the 2008 rules, a claim for service after that date on the level and the cell under the 2016 rules, and the two sets of rules are not interchangeable for any period.

Related Articles

• Grade pay
• Pay matrix
• Index of rationalisation
• 6th Central Pay Commission
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 5th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• Central Pay Commission
• CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016
• Fitment factor
• Minimum pay
• Dearness pay
• Pay fixation
• Pay fixation on promotion
• Option for pay fixation on promotion
• Annual increment
• Date of next increment
• Bunching of pay
• Stepping up of pay
• Non-functional upgradation
• Modified Assured Career Progression
• Concordance table
• Family pension
• Cabinet Secretary pay
• Higher Administrative Grade
• Defence pay matrix
• Military service pay
• Salary by pay level
• Aykroyd formula
• Pay anomaly and the anomaly committee
• Dearness allowance
• House rent allowance
• Central government employees in India
• Department of Expenditure
• Take-home salary of central government employees
• 7th CPC salary calculator

External references

• CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2008, gazette notification G.S.R. 622(E) (doe.gov.in)
• CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, gazette notification G.S.R. 721(E) (doe.gov.in)
• Report of the Sixth Central Pay Commission (doe.gov.in)
• Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (doe.gov.in)
• Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare

References

1. Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2008, gazette notification G.S.R. 622(E), dated 29 August 2008: Rule 3 (definitions of pay in the pay band, grade pay and basic pay), Rule 4 (scale of pay of posts), Rule 7 (fixation of initial pay at 1.86, with the minimum-of-band and bunching provisos and Note 1 on Group D), Rule 9 (rate of increment), Rule 10 (date of increment and the proviso on reaching the maximum of a band), Rule 13 (fixation on promotion), Rule 14 (arrears in two instalments), and the First Schedule, Part A, Sections I and II.
2. Report of the Sixth Central Pay Commission, submitted 24 March 2008: paragraph 2.2.21 (grade pay at 40% of the maximum of the pre-revised scale, and the 1.74 fixation multiple) and Table 2.2.2.
3. Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, gazette notification G.S.R. 721(E), dated 25 July 2016: Rule 2 (application and exclusions), Rule 7 (fixation at the 2.57 fitment factor), Rule 13 (fixation on promotion) and the Schedule (pay matrix).
4. Ministry of Finance Resolution No. 1-2/2016-IC, dated 16 May 2017, and the Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) (Amendment) Rules, 2017, gazette notification G.S.R. 592(E), dated 15 June 2017, substituting the Level 13 column and raising its entry cell from Rs. 1,18,500 to Rs. 1,23,100.
5. Department of Personnel and Training notification S.O. 946(E), dated 9 April 2009, classifying central civil posts by grade pay, superseded by notification S.O. 3964(E), dated 9 August 2018, classifying them by pay level.
6. Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum F. No. 1/1/2008-IC, dated 30 August 2008, on payment of arrears of the 2006 revision.
7. Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare Office Memorandum F. No. 38/37/2016-P&PW(A), dated 12 May 2017, on notional-pay revision of pre-2016 pensions, and the Office Memorandum of even number dated 6 July 2017 issuing the 58 concordance tables.