Ration Money Allowance

The Ration Money Allowance is a daily cash allowance paid by the Government of India to all personnel of the armed forces and to the non-gazetted personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces, Delhi Police and the Intelligence Bureau, in place of a ration entitlement. The rate is Rs. 151.93 per head per day for the year 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. It is fixed by the administering ministry, not by a pay commission, and it carries no dearness-allowance escalator.

At Rs. 151.93 a day the allowance produces Rs. 4,558 in a 30-day month and Rs. 55,454 over a 365-day year. For a Constable (General Duty) of the Central Armed Police Forces at the Level 3 entry cell of Rs. 21,700, that is 21% of basic pay, and it is the largest single non-matrix cash item on the payslip in a peace posting. The rate has risen from Rs. 117.40 in 2019-20, a gain of 29.4% over six years.

Two features separate this allowance from almost every other entry in the 7th Central Pay Commission’s allowance schedule. It is not a percentage of pay and not a matrix cell, so the 25% step-up that lifted the risk and hardship allowances when dearness allowance crossed 50% does not touch it. And it runs on two separate rate streams, one notified by the Ministry of Home Affairs for the police organisations and one by the Ministry of Defence for the services, a split paragraph 8.17.105 of the 7th CPC report examined and deliberately left alone.

It is a child of the allowances hub.

The rate, and the rate series since 2019-20

The Ration Money Allowance is Rs. 151.93 per head per day for the financial year 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. One rate runs for a whole financial year, and the rate for the Central Armed Police Forces, the Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police is adopted at par for the Railway Protection Force, which is why the Railway Board circular series is the most readable public record of the figures.

Every letter in that table carries the file number E(P&A)I-2005/ALL/RPF-2. The rates are from those letters; the year-on-year column is a salary-calculator.in computation on them, and it shows a series that is not smooth. The 8.19% of 2021-22 and the 6.84% of 2022-23 sit against 0.53% in 2020-21 and 1.26% in 2025-26, so the common description of this as a slow-moving figure holds for some years and fails badly for others.

Who draws the allowance

Paragraph 8.17.103 of the report of the 7th Central Pay Commission, submitted in November 2015, states the entitled class. It runs to all personnel of the Defence forces and to the non-gazetted personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces, Delhi Police, the Intelligence Bureau and the Andaman and Nicobar Police, together with those Indian Reserve Battalion personnel posted in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands who do not dine in the mess. The qualifier about dining in the mess attaches to the Indian Reserve Battalion limb alone, and not to the forces named before it.

The Central Armed Police Forces limb covers the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal and the Assam Rifles. An ordinary civilian central government employee has no ration entitlement and draws nothing under this head.

Two extensions sit on top of the 2015 position. Ministry of Home Affairs letter No. II-27012/66/CF-3040399/2008-PF.I dated 7 August 2017 extended the allowance to combatised gazetted officers up to the rank of Commandant in the Border Security Force, the Sashastra Seema Bal and the Intelligence Bureau, revising their rate from Rs. 96.30 to Rs. 97.85 per head per day. And paragraph 8.17.106 of the Commission’s report made personnel below officer rank of the Central Armed Police Forces and the Indian Coast Guard eligible irrespective of the place of posting, removing at the same time the restriction that had barred Sashastra Seema Bal officers posted in field areas below 7,000 feet.

The standing terms and conditions of the allowance for the police organisations are older than any of this. They are in Ministry of Home Affairs order No. 27012/26/98/PF.I dated 7 September 1998.

The CAPF entitlement is a cash entitlement, subject to one bar

For personnel below officer rank of the Central Armed Police Forces the allowance is not conditional on going unfed on a particular day. Paragraph 8.17.106 makes the entitlement run irrespective of the place of posting, and names exactly one exception: a period in receipt of Detachment Allowance.

That exception was tightened in 2016. Paragraph 8.15.22(a) of the Commission’s report records the position it inherited, under which the personnel elected between full Detachment Allowance with loss of Ration Money Allowance, or half Detachment Allowance with the ration money in full. Paragraph 8.15.23 abolished the choice, holding that Detachment Allowance already includes provision for food, that presenting a choice between the two was therefore not logical, and that no Ration Money Allowance should be granted with Detachment Allowance. The same paragraph adds that where free rations are provided, only 50% of the Detachment Allowance is to be granted.

Paragraph 9 of Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017 carries the bar into the CAPF allowance package as an election between two limbs. The first is a Risk and Hardship Allowance, where applicable, together with the Ration Money Allowance. The second is Detachment Allowance together with either Special Duty Allowance or Tough Location Allowance, where applicable. A member elects one package, not items across both, which is why a field area allowance and the ration money appear together on a payslip while Detachment Allowance and the ration money never do.

When the allowance stops during leave

The allowance is admissible during leave on average pay and is not admissible during three other leave categories. Railway Board letter No. E(P&A)I-2005/ALL/RPF-2 dated 14 June 2018, issued as RBE No. 88/2018, decided a reference from the Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, in consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, and clarified that no Ration Money Allowance is admissible during commuted leave, maternity leave or paternity leave.

That clarification settles what the entitlement actually tracks. A rule under which the allowance follows the day’s food would have nothing to say about the difference between leave on average pay and commuted leave, because a member on either is equally away from the unit kitchen. The entitlement tracks the category of leave, and therefore the pay status of the member, which is the behaviour of a pay entitlement rather than of a food substitute.

The armed forces position

The services run on a different trigger and a different rate stream. Ministry of Defence, Department of Military Affairs letter No. 1(17)/2022/D(Pay/Services), issued in November 2022 on the ration entitlement of Agniveers, states the rule at paragraph 2: a member proceeding on leave or temporary duty and not drawing ration in kind is entitled to draw Ration Money Allowance, a Special Rate of Ration Allowance, or condiment expenditure, at the rate notified by the Government of India orders it then names.

Three points follow, and none of them is true of the CAPF limb. The triggering circumstance on the defence side is leave or temporary duty without ration in kind, not a standing entitlement. There are three distinct cash heads, not one. And the rates come from the Quartermaster General’s ST-6 staff line in the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Military Affairs, under a Common Ration file series, the orders named in that letter being No. PC-12045/Q/ST-6/(Common Ration)/1411/DMA(QS)/2019 dated 4 April 2019, No. 21704/ST-6 (Condiments)/1414/D(QS) dated 5 July 2022 and No. PC-1/12045/Q/ST-6/(Common Ration)/1423/DMA(QS)/2022 dated 7 July 2022.

Paragraph 8.17.105 of the 7th CPC report is the authority for treating the two streams as genuinely separate: the Commission recorded that the allowance “is revised periodically by Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Home for their personnel” and proposed that the status quo on the rates be maintained for that reason. The Rs. 151.93 figure is the Ministry of Home Affairs rate. It should not be assumed to be the rate a soldier draws.

The authorised ration scales themselves are service instruments rather than published documents. For the Army they sit in Special Army Instructions 7/S/74 and 2/S/72 and Army Instructions 94/76 and 18/76, read with Ministry of Defence letters No. 66195/Q/ST-6/1069/D(QS) dated 19 May 2010, No. 66195/Q/ST-6/1948/D(QS) dated 23 September 2010 and No. 66196/Q(ST-6)/4048/D(QS) dated 15 November 2007. For the Navy the instrument is Navy Instruction No. 2 of 1998, and for the Air Force, Air Force Instruction No. 18/S dated 24 August 1968, with Air Force Instruction No. 4/S dated 18 November 1969 for non-combatants (enrolled). No equivalent instrument for the Central Armed Police Forces is published.

Free ration for defence officers in peace areas ended on 1 July 2017

Paragraph 8.17.108 of the 7th CPC report recommended that the provision of free rations and the grant of Ration Money Allowance to officers of the Defence forces posted in peace areas should both be withdrawn. The Government accepted the first half and rejected the second.

Appendix I to Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017, the Ministry of Finance Department of Expenditure resolution notifying the Government’s decisions on allowances, lists Ration Money Allowance at item 20 among the 34 recommendations modified. The decision is that free ration for officers of the Defence Forces shall be discontinued in peace areas, that the allowance shall continue to be paid to officers of the Defence Forces posted in peace areas, and that the cash shall be credited directly into the officers’ bank accounts. The identical decision appears at Appendix II serial 138. Paragraph 6 of the Resolution makes the revised rates of allowances admissible with effect from 1 July 2017.

The popular account of this decision, that the Government reversed the withdrawal of free rations, is the wrong way round. Free ration in kind for defence officers in peace areas was in fact discontinued, exactly as the Commission recommended. What survived was the cash. The Department of Expenditure’s own one-page decision summary of 6 July 2017 states it loosely, as the abolition of ration money and free ration not being accepted, and the Resolution’s appendices are the operative text where the two differ.

What the 7th CPC and the Committee on Allowances decided

The Commission listed the allowance at serial 138 of its summary of recommendations with the disposal “Retained. Rationalized.” Nothing in the report proposed a change to the rate. Paragraph 8.17.105 proposed that the status quo be maintained on the rates because the two ministries revise them for their own personnel, and the rationalisation was the widening at paragraph 8.17.106 and the removal of the Detachment Allowance election at paragraph 8.15.23.

The Committee on Allowances, whose report of 27 April 2017 the Cabinet accepted on 28 June 2017, dealt with the allowance at paragraph 3.6.9. The demand it acted on came from the Ministry of Defence, which asked that the allowance continue in peace areas and be paid in cash, and from the Special Protection Group, which asked for the allowance at par with the Border Security Force. The Committee accepted the Ministry of Defence suggestion, costed it at Rs. 150.40 crore a year benefiting about 43,473 officers, held the Special Protection Group demand to be outside its remit, and recommended that the income-tax question be taken up separately with the Department of Revenue.

Two widenings are therefore often run together and should not be. The widening for the Central Armed Police Forces and the Indian Coast Guard is the Commission’s own, at paragraph 8.17.106, and went through unmodified. The widening for defence officers in peace areas is the Committee’s, at paragraph 3.6.9, and reached the Resolution as a modification of the Commission’s recommendation.

How the rate is fixed, and why it arrives late

The rate is notified per financial year by the administering ministry. For the Central Armed Police Forces, the Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police that is the Ministry of Home Affairs Police Finance Wing, in the file series II-27012/66, of which letter No. II-27012/66/CF-3629387/2008-PF.I dated 5 February 2024 is the order behind the 2022-23 and 2023-24 rates.

The sanction is expressly post-facto, and the orders say so. Paragraph 3 of Railway Board letter No. E(P&A)I-2005/ALL/RPF-2 dated 20 June 2024, issued as RBE No. 53/2024, accords post-facto sanction to revise the rate from Rs. 127.69 to Rs. 136.43 per head per day for 2022-23 and to Rs. 142.75 for 2023-24. Both years had ended before the order issued, the second of them nearly three months before. An earlier letter of 16 November 2022 issued three years of rates at once, covering 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22.

The practical consequence for a member is arrears. The allowance is drawn through the year at the last notified rate, and the difference is settled when the new rate issues, which can be a year or more later and can cover more than one year at a time.

No published order states the method by which the figure is arrived at. The Commission’s own description at paragraph 8.17.105 goes no further than periodic revision by the two ministries. Against the common account, that the rate is the money value of a fixed ration basket priced at prevailing rates, stands a figure in the Commission’s own paragraph 8.17.103: the then rate was Rs. 95.52 a day for non-gazetted personnel and Rs. 79.93 a day for gazetted personnel. A single priced ration scale cannot produce two different daily costs for the same food, so whatever the ministries are doing is not simply costing a basket.

No dearness-allowance escalator

The allowance carries no automatic escalation. Paragraph 10 of Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017 provides that the rates in that order rise by a further 25% each time dearness allowance rises by 50%, and the rates in that order are the Risk and Hardship matrix cells. The drafting confines the escalator to the matrix, and the Ration Money Allowance sits outside it.

This is the sharpest structural contrast on a CAPF payslip. Dress Allowance for personnel below officer rank of the Central Armed Police Forces went from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 12,500 a year in one step on 1 January 2024 under that escalator, and the Risk and Hardship matrix cells rose 25% on the same date. The ration money rose 5.11% that year, on its own cycle, for its own reasons, notified by a different ministry.

The tax position

The cash Ration Money Allowance is fully taxable as salary, under both the old regime and the default new regime.

No serial of the Table in Schedule III to the Income-tax Act, 2025 covers rations, messing or food. The serials that a reader would reach for are the four confined to members of the armed forces in the table to rule 280(2) of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, notified by Central Board of Direct Taxes Notification No. 22/2026, G.S.R. 198(E), dated 20 March 2026: serial 11 for high altitude, serial 13 for a highly active field area, serial 14 for island duty and serial 15 for Siachen. That table stops at fifteen entries and none of them is a food or ration head. The seven limbs of rule 280(1), which prescribe serial 12 of Schedule III, are likewise not food.

The default new regime changes nothing here. Section 202(2)(a)(ii) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 withdraws the prescribed-allowance exemptions, and rule 280(3) leaves only rule 280(1)(a) to (d) and serial 10 of the rule 280(2) table standing. The Ration Money Allowance was never in either list, so it is taxable in the new regime for the same reason it is taxable in the old one: it is nowhere in Schedule III at all. For the wider position see income tax for government employees and old versus new tax regime.

The exemption the Commission recommended and nobody granted

The 7th Central Pay Commission asked for this allowance to be exempt. Paragraph 8.17.107 records that the Commission had refrained from making recommendations involving income tax, but that looking into the service conditions of the Central Armed Police Forces it took the view that because the allowance is granted in lieu of free rations it should be exempt from income tax.

Nothing came of it. The Committee on Allowances declined to decide the question at paragraph 3.6.9 and referred it to the Department of Revenue. Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017 is silent on income tax in both its Appendix I item 20 and its Appendix II serial 138. Nine years later the Income-tax Act, 2025 and the Income-tax Rules, 2026 carry no ration head, so the recommendation has been outstanding and unimplemented since November 2015.

Ration issued in kind

Ration provided as food is a perquisite rather than an allowance, and it is valued under serial 3 of the Table to rule 15 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. The value of free food and non-alcoholic beverages provided by an employer is the employer’s expenditure on it, reduced by any amount paid or recovered from the employee.

Three cases are carved out of that valuation: free food and non-alcoholic beverages provided during working hours at office or business premises, or through paid vouchers usable only at eating joints, to the extent the value does not exceed Rs. 200 per meal; tea or snacks provided during working hours; and free food and non-alcoholic beverages provided during working hours in a remote area or an off-shore installation. The rule’s definitions clause defines a remote area as any area other than one within the local limits of, or within thirty kilometres measured aerially of the local limits of, a municipality or cantonment board with a population of one lakh or more on the 2011 census, though that definition is drafted by reference to the accommodation limb of the same rule.

Neither the Act nor the Rules carries any exclusion specific to rations issued to the armed forces or to the Central Armed Police Forces.

Where the allowance sits against the other force payments

A CAPF payslip carries several items a civilian at the same pay level does not, and they answer different things. The Risk and Hardship Allowance is a matrix cell graded by the danger and difficulty of the duty. Dress Allowance is an annual payment for the uniform, which Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 19051/1/2017-E.IV dated 2 August 2017 created by subsuming the older washing allowance and kit maintenance heads. Military Service Pay recognises the conditions of military service and is a pay element, not an allowance.

The Ration Money Allowance belongs to none of those groups. It is a flat daily rate, identical for a Constable and for a Commandant drawing it under the 2017 extension, unrelated to pay level, unrelated to the hazard of the posting, and unrelated to the city of posting. On a Level 3 payslip it is worth Rs. 4,558 a month against a Level 3 entry basic of Rs. 21,700, which is more than the transport allowance at that level and more than the Dress Allowance spread across twelve months. The CAPF constable salary article works it into a full payslip.

The 8th CPC outlook

Nothing about this allowance waits on the 8th Central Pay Commission. The 7th CPC declined to set its rate at paragraph 8.17.105, on the ground that the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Home Affairs revise it for their own personnel, and there is no reason on the face of that reasoning for the next Commission to take it up. The rate will move when the administering ministry notifies the next financial year’s figure, post-facto, in the ordinary course.

The one live question a Commission could reach is the income-tax exemption at paragraph 8.17.107, which the 7th CPC recommended, the Committee on Allowances referred out on 27 April 2017 and the Department of Revenue has not acted on in the nine years since.

Related Articles

• Allowances for central government employees
• Central Armed Police Forces
• Central Reserve Police Force
• CAPF constable salary
• Sub-Inspector salary
• Ministry of Home Affairs
• Risk and hardship allowance
• Detachment allowance
• Special duty allowance
• Field area allowance
• High Altitude and Siachen Allowance
• Counter-insurgency operations allowance
• Hard area allowance
• Island special duty allowance
• Tribal area allowance
• Special compensatory remote locality allowance
• Flying allowance
• Military Service Pay
• Defence pay matrix
• Special Protection Group
• Intelligence Bureau
• Railway Protection Force
• Dress allowance
• Washing allowance
• National holiday allowance
• Abolished allowances under the 7th CPC
• Maternity leave in government
• Transport allowance
• Dearness allowance
• Pay matrix
• Basic pay
• Salary by pay level
• Take-home salary for central government employees
• Income tax for government employees
• Income-tax Act 2025
• Old versus new tax regime
• Section 115BAC (default new regime)
• Department of Expenditure
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• Central government employees in India
• 7th CPC salary calculator

External references

• Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission, Department of Expenditure
• Report of the Committee on Allowances, 27 April 2017, Department of Expenditure
• Railway Board circular on the Ration Money Allowance rate, 20 June 2024
• Railway Board circular on the Ration Money Allowance during leave, 14 June 2018
• Ministry of Home Affairs order granting Risk and Hardship Allowance to CAPF personnel, 31 July 2017
• Ministry of Defence order on provisions of ration admissible under the Agnipath Scheme

References

1. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (November 2015), paragraphs 8.17.103 to 8.17.108 (Ration Money Allowance), paragraphs 8.15.22 and 8.15.23 (Detachment Allowance), and serial 138 of the summary of recommendations.
2. Report of the Committee on Allowances (27 April 2017), paragraph 3.6.9 and serial 9 of its list of allowances abolished for certain categories.
3. Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017, Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure, Appendix I item 20 and Appendix II serial 138.
4. Ministry of Home Affairs order No. 27012/26/98/PF.I dated 7 September 1998 (terms and conditions), and letter No. II-27012/66/CF-3040399/2008-PF.I dated 7 August 2017 (combatised gazetted officers).
5. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017, paragraphs 9, 10 and 11.
6. Railway Board letter No. E(P&A)I-2005/ALL/RPF-2 dated 20 June 2024 (RBE No. 53/2024), dated 14 June 2018 (RBE No. 88/2018) and dated 13 February 2026 (RBE No. 14/2026).
7. Ministry of Defence, Department of Military Affairs letter No. 1(17)/2022/D(Pay/Services) (November 2022), paragraph 2.
8. Income-tax Act, 2025, Schedule III and Section 202(2)(a)(ii); Income-tax Rules, 2026, rule 280 and rule 15, notified by Central Board of Direct Taxes Notification No. 22/2026, G.S.R. 198(E), dated 20 March 2026.