Revision of pension

On each pay commission an existing pensioner's pension is re-fixed: pre-2016 pensioners got the higher of 2.57 times the old pension or half a notional pay.

Updated 22 July 2026 · Reviewed by Salary-Calculator.in

Revision of pension is the re-fixing of an existing central government pensioner’s pension when a new Central Pay Commission takes effect, so that a person who retired years or decades earlier does not remain frozen on the pay structure of their own retirement year but is brought up to the level of the revised structure. A pension is not a fixed rupee figure set once and left; it is revised once per pay commission, and between revisions only the dearness relief on it changes. The most recent revision was carried out under the 7th Central Pay Commission , and the next will follow the 8th Central Pay Commission when it reports.

The principle behind revision is parity across generations of retirees. A person who retired in, say, 1996 on the 5th Central Pay Commission scales should not draw a pension that has fallen far behind a person retiring today from the same post, and the revision mechanism keeps a past retiree’s pension in a defined relationship to the pay of a serving employee in the corresponding grade. Without it, the value of an old pension would erode against every fresh cohort of retirees, and the promise that a pension continues a defined proportion of the pay the office carries would be hollow for anyone who retired long ago.

This article sets out what revision of pension means and how it differs from both the original pension fixation and the periodic dearness relief, the two routes under the 7th Central Pay Commission for a pre-2016 pensioner, the notional pay fixation method in detail, the concordance tables that operationalise it, the floor and ceiling after revision, the revision of family pension and the additional pension in old age that ride along with it, the earlier 6th Central Pay Commission revision and the principle of modified parity, the digital machinery of Bhavishya, SAMPANN, and the Central Pension Accounting Office through which a revision is now processed, the pension arrears a revision generates and their tax treatment, and how the 8th Central Pay Commission will revise pensions again. Every load-bearing figure is tied to the CCS (Pension) Rules or the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare orders.

What revision of pension means

Three different things increase what a pensioner receives over time, and it is worth separating them. The first is the original fixation of the pension at retirement, 50 per cent of the last pay or of the average of the last ten months, whichever is higher, computed once when the person retires. The second is dearness relief, a percentage added on top of the basic pension and revised twice a year to track inflation. The third is revision of pension, the re-fixing of the basic pension itself when a new pay commission changes the underlying pay structure. Revision is the subject of this article, and it is the least frequent of the three, happening once per pay commission, roughly once a decade.

Revision matters because it works on the base to which everything else is applied. When the basic pension is revised upward, the dearness relief, which is a percentage of the basic pension, rises with it, and the additional pension in old age, which is a percentage of the basic pension, rises too. A revision therefore lifts the whole structure of what the pensioner draws, not just the headline basic figure. It is also the mechanism that carries a pensioner across pay-structure changes: the move from the 6th Central Pay Commission’s pay bands and grade pay to the 7th Central Pay Commission’s single pay matrix was bridged, for existing pensioners, by exactly this revision exercise.

The two routes under the 7th Central Pay Commission

For a pensioner who retired before 1 January 2016, the 7th Central Pay Commission revision offered two routes, and the pensioner is granted whichever gives the higher pension. The first route is a simple multiplication: the pre-revised basic pension, as it stood on 31 December 2015, is multiplied by the fitment factor of 2.57, the same headline multiple applied across the 7th CPC revision, to give the revised basic pension. This route needs no service records beyond the existing pension figure, so it could be applied at once to every pensioner from the Pension Payment Order already on file.

The second route is notional pay fixation. Here the pay the pensioner drew at retirement is reconstructed forward, through each intervening pay commission’s own fixation formula, into a notional pay on 1 January 2016 in the 7th CPC pay matrix, and 50 per cent of that notional pay is taken as the revised pension. The 7th Central Pay Commission had originally proposed to fix the notional pay in the matrix directly from the number of increments earned in the level from which the pensioner retired, but that was found not to be feasible for the older cases, where the service records needed to count the increments were no longer available. In its place, a committee headed by the Secretary of the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare worked out the stepped notional fixation described above, which was notified through the order of 12 May 2017, alongside the multiplication route notified earlier on 4 August 2016. The pensioner receives the higher of the two, so no one is worse off for the second route existing, and the notional route restores fuller parity with a serving employee in the corresponding level.

The notional pay fixation method in detail

The notional pay fixation answers a precise question: what pay would this pensioner notionally be drawing on 1 January 2016 if they had continued in service on the same terms until then? It is a notional figure the person never actually drew, used purely to compute a revised pension. The pay drawn at retirement is first placed in the pay structure of the commission in force at retirement, then stepped forward through each successive commission’s fixation formula, the 5th to the 6th and the 6th to the 7th, to arrive at a cell in the pay matrix, and half of that cell value is the revised pension.

The reason this route restores fuller parity is that it tracks the pay of the post through every structural change, rather than applying a single flat multiple to an old pension figure. Two pensioners who retired from the same level with the same length of service will, by this method, arrive at the same revised pension, whereas the multiplication route can leave small differences frozen in from older pay structures. The method is demanding to apply by hand, because it requires the fixation rules of several commissions, which is exactly why the concordance tables were issued to pre-compute it. The relationship to the serving-employee fixation is close but not identical: a serving employee was fixed in one step by multiplying live pay by 2.57 and placing it in the matrix, whereas the pensioner’s notional pay is reconstructed across commissions, so the notional pay fixation for a pensioner is its own exercise.

The concordance tables

The concordance tables are the practical instrument of the 7th CPC revision. The Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare issued 58 tables, in 2017, that map a pre-2016 pay and pension to the corresponding notional pay and revised pension in the 7th CPC matrix, one table for each pre-revised pay scale or pay-band-and-grade-pay combination running back through the earlier commissions. A pensioner, or the disbursing bank, or the Head of Office fixing the notional pay, looks up the pre-revised pay in the relevant table and reads off the notional pay and the revised pension, so the multi-commission reconstruction does not have to be worked out afresh in each case.

The tables are what make the notional route administrable at the scale of millions of pensioners. They also serve as a check: a pensioner who suspects their revised pension is wrong can trace the pre-revised figure through the table and see the revised figure the rules produce. The full working of the tables, including how the index of rationalisation in the pay matrix affects the notional pay and where the common errors lie, is set out in the concordance table article; for the purpose of revision, the point is that the tables are the tool through which the notional fixation is delivered.

Minimum, maximum, and dearness relief after revision

The revised pension is bounded at both ends. After the 7th CPC revision the minimum pension is Rs. 9,000 a month, so a revised pension that works out below that floor is raised to Rs. 9,000, and the maximum is Rs. 1,25,000 a month, which is 50 per cent of the highest pay in government of Rs. 2,50,000. These are the same floor and ceiling that apply to a pension fixed at retirement today, so a revised pension and a freshly fixed pension sit on the same scale. The floor is particularly important for the oldest pensioners, whose pre-revised pensions were set on much lower pay and who are lifted to the minimum by the revision.

Dearness relief is then added on top of the revised basic pension at the rate in force, which is 60 per cent from 1 January 2026, and it continues to be revised twice a year independently of any pension revision. This is the key distinction to hold onto: revision re-fixes the basic pension once per pay commission, while dearness relief adjusts twice a year on top of whatever the basic pension currently is. When a revision raises the basic pension, the dearness relief, being a percentage of it, rises in absolute terms as well, so the two interact, but they remain separate mechanisms on separate cycles. The minimum and maximum pension article sets out the floor and ceiling in full.

Revision of family pension and the additional pension in old age

A revision of pension carries the family pension with it. When the pay commission revises the pension, it revises the family pension on the same basis, so the ordinary family pension remains 30 per cent of the notional or revised pay and the enhanced family pension remains 50 per cent, computed on the revised figure, subject to the same floor of Rs. 9,000 and the ceilings of Rs. 75,000 at the ordinary rate and Rs. 1,25,000 at the enhanced rate. A family already drawing a family pension on a pre-2016 basis has it revised through the same concordance tables, so the family is not left on the old figure.

The additional pension in old age also rides on the revised pension. The additional quantum, 20 per cent of the basic pension from the age of 80, rising to 30, 40, 50, and 100 per cent at 85, 90, 95, and 100 years, is computed on the revised basic pension, so an aged pensioner whose pension is revised sees the old-age addition rise in step. The revision thus lifts not just the basic pension but every benefit calculated as a percentage of it, which is why the revision exercise is the single most consequential change to a pensioner’s entitlement between one pay commission and the next.

The 6th Central Pay Commission revision and modified parity

Revision of pension is not new to the 7th Central Pay Commission; each commission has revised the pensions of earlier retirees. The 6th Central Pay Commission revised the pensions of those who had retired before 1 January 2006 by consolidating the existing pension, the basic pension together with the dearness pension and dearness relief then in force and a fitment weightage, into a revised pension, subject to a floor. The floor gave effect to the principle of modified parity: the revised pension of a pre-2006 pensioner could not be less than 50 per cent of the minimum of the pay in the pay band plus the grade pay of the post from which the person had retired, so an old retiree was pulled up to a defined proportion of the entry pay of their old post under the new structure.

Modified parity is the idea that runs through every pension revision. Full parity would mean an old retiree drew exactly what a fresh retiree from the same post draws; modified parity guarantees at least a defined proportion, the 50 per cent floor, while the notional pay method of the 7th Central Pay Commission moved closer to full parity by reconstructing the pay of the post through each commission. The direction of travel across commissions has been from a flat consolidation toward fuller parity, and the 7th CPC notional route is the furthest that principle has been taken for civil pensioners. The dearness pay that formed part of the 6th CPC consolidation is itself a historical device, the merger of part of dearness allowance into pay, that no longer operates in the same form.

How a revision is processed today

The revision of a pension is now largely a digital exercise. For central civil pensioners, the sanction and revision of pension moves through Bhavishya, the online system the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare operates, which carries a case through each stage and issues an electronic Pension Payment Order; the Bhavishya system tracks the case and alerts the retiree at each step. For the pensioners of the Department of Telecommunications, the parallel system is SAMPANN , the System for Accounting and Management of Pension, which processes sanction, revision, and direct credit end to end. The revised authority in each case issues under the existing Pension Payment Order number, so the pensioner keeps the same PPO with a revised entitlement.

The Central Pension Accounting Office sits at the centre of the payment chain for most central civil pensioners: it authorises the revised pension to the disbursing banks, which then pay the revised figure and the arrears into the pensioner’s account. Where a pensioner believes a revision is wrong or delayed, the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare grievance portal is the channel of redress, routing the complaint to whichever office, the sanctioning authority, the Central Pension Accounting Office, or the bank, is responsible for the stage at which the problem arose. The move to Bhavishya and SAMPANN has compressed what was once a paper process running through several offices into a tracked electronic workflow.

Pension arrears on a revision

A revision almost always generates arrears, because the revised pension takes effect from a date, typically the first day the pay commission’s revision applies, that is earlier than the date the revised authority is actually issued. The pension arrears are the difference between the revised pension and the pension actually drawn, for the months between the effective date and the date the revision is implemented, and they are paid as a lump sum by the disbursing bank once the revised authority reaches it. For the 7th CPC revision the effective date was 1 January 2016, so a revision implemented later carried arrears back to that date.

Arrears matter for income tax because they arrive in a single year but relate to several. Where arrears of pension are received in a lump sum, the pensioner can claim relief under Section 89 of the Income-tax Act, which spreads the arrears notionally over the years to which they relate so that the pensioner is not pushed into a higher slab by the bunching. The taxation of a pension and the relief available on arrears is set out in the income tax for pensioners article; the point here is that a revision brings both a higher monthly pension going forward and a one-time arrears payment for the intervening period.

Corrections, wrong fixation, and re-revision

A revision can be got wrong, most often through a mis-stated level, an incorrect count of increments, or the use of the wrong concordance table, and the rules provide for correction. Where a pensioner’s revised pension has been fixed too low, the pensioner or the disbursing bank can seek a re-fixation with reference to the correct pre-revised pay and the correct table, and a revised authority is issued for the corrected figure with arrears from the original effective date. Because the notional route depends on service particulars, an error in those particulars is the commonest cause of an incorrect revision, and the concordance tables are the reference against which the correction is checked.

The right to a correct revision does not lapse merely because time has passed since the original revision, since an under-fixed pension is a continuing wrong that the pensioner draws every month. A pensioner who finds, on comparing their revised pension against the concordance table for their pre-revised pay, that the figure is short, should take the matter up through the grievance channel, and the correction, when made, carries arrears. This is distinct from a revision on a new pay commission: a correction re-applies the existing revision rules to the right facts, whereas a fresh pay commission applies new rules to everyone.

One Rank One Pension as a special revision

For defence pensioners a distinct revision mechanism operates alongside the pay-commission revision: One Rank One Pension , under which a defence pensioner’s pension is periodically brought up to the level of a current retiree of the same rank and length of service, rather than only on a pay commission. One Rank One Pension is a revision principle in its own right, revising past retirees’ pensions to the current level at defined intervals, and it sits on top of the pay-commission revision that applies to civil and defence pensioners alike. It is the fullest expression of parity across generations of retirees, because it equalises the pension of an old retiree with a fresh one of the same rank at each revision.

For central civil pensioners there is no One Rank One Pension of this kind; their parity is the modified parity delivered by the pay-commission revision and the notional pay method. The distinction matters when comparing a civil and a defence pension, because a defence pension is revised both on the pay commission and on the One Rank One Pension cycle, whereas a civil pension is revised on the pay commission alone. The mechanics and the periodic revision of One Rank One Pension are set out in its own article.

Worked examples

A pre-2016 pension is revised to the higher of 2.57 times the old basic pension or 50 per cent of the notional pay, with dearness relief added on top. Taking dearness relief at 60 per cent:

A pensioner drawing a pre-revised basic pension of Rs. 15,000 as on 31 December 2015 has it revised, on the multiplication route, to 2.57 times Rs. 15,000, which is Rs. 38,550 a month. If the notional pay fixation for their level produces a notional pay whose half is Rs. 40,000, the pensioner is granted the higher figure of Rs. 40,000, plus dearness relief of Rs. 24,000, a total of Rs. 64,000 a month.
A pensioner whose pre-revised basic pension was Rs. 3,200 on an old scale has it multiplied by 2.57 to Rs. 8,224, which is below the floor, so the revised pension is raised to the minimum of Rs. 9,000 a month, plus dearness relief of Rs. 5,400, a total of Rs. 14,400.
A family already drawing a family pension of Rs. 9,000 on a pre-2016 basis has it revised through the same tables, remaining at the floor of Rs. 9,000 where the revised figure is lower, plus dearness relief, so the family is carried onto the revised scale rather than left on the old figure.

In each case the revision re-fixes the basic pension, dearness relief is then applied on top at the current rate, and arrears run from the effective date of the revision. To see the pension in the wider retirement-benefit framework, see the central government pension hub and the pension calculation article.

Revision of pension and the 8th Central Pay Commission

The next revision of pension will follow the 8th Central Pay Commission , which was constituted in November 2025 and is the first commission to sit after the Unified Pension Scheme came into force. On reporting, it will re-fix the pensions of those already retired, in all likelihood through a fresh fitment factor applied to the existing pension and a notional pay method into a revised pay structure, operationalised through a new set of concordance tables, in the same shape as the 7th CPC revision. Existing pensioners under the Old Pension Scheme , and the family-pension and assured-payout side of the Unified Pension Scheme, will be revised; the National Pension System corpus route does not carry a defined pension to revise in the same way.

No figure for the 8th CPC revision can be stated as fact until the Commission reports and revised rules are notified. Any fitment factor, minimum pension, ceiling, or effective date attributed to the 8th Central Pay Commission is a projection until then. What can be said is the shape of the exercise: a re-fixing of the basic pension for existing pensioners, a floor giving effect to modified parity, and a set of concordance tables to deliver it, with dearness relief continuing on its own twice-yearly cycle in the meantime.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is revision of pension?

Revision of pension is the re-fixing of an existing pensioner’s pension when a new Central Pay Commission takes effect, so that a person who retired on an old pay structure has their pension brought up to the level of the revised structure. It is different from dearness relief, which is a twice-yearly inflation adjustment on top of the pension. A pension is revised once per pay commission and, in between, only its dearness relief changes.

How was a pre-2016 pension revised under the 7th Central Pay Commission?

Through two routes, with the pensioner getting the higher. The first multiplies the pre-revised basic pension as on 31 December 2015 by the fitment factor of 2.57. The second fixes a notional pay for the pensioner in the 7th CPC pay matrix, by stepping the pay drawn at retirement forward through each intervening pay commission, and takes 50 per cent of that notional pay as the revised pension. The pensioner is granted whichever of the two is higher.

What is the notional pay fixation method?

The notional pay fixation reconstructs the pay the pensioner would notionally be drawing on 1 January 2016 had they still been in service. The pay drawn at retirement is stepped forward through each pay commission’s own fixation formula, the 5th to the 6th and the 6th to the 7th, to arrive at a cell in the 7th CPC pay matrix, and 50 per cent of that notional pay is the revised pension. The concordance tables pre-compute this multi-commission reconstruction.

What are the concordance tables?

The concordance tables are 58 tables issued by the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare that map a pre-2016 pay and pension to the corresponding revised 7th CPC pension. A pensioner or a disbursing bank looks up the pre-revised pay and reads off the notional pay and revised pension, so the notional fixation does not have to be worked out by hand in each case.

What is the minimum and maximum pension after revision?

After the 7th CPC revision the minimum pension is Rs. 9,000 a month and the maximum is Rs. 1,25,000 a month, which is 50 per cent of the highest pay in government of Rs. 2,50,000. A revised pension that works out below Rs. 9,000 is raised to the floor. Dearness relief is added on top of the revised basic pension at the rate in force, 60 per cent from 1 January 2026.

Is dearness relief part of revision of pension?

No. Dearness relief is a separate, twice-yearly adjustment for inflation, paid as a percentage on top of the basic pension, and it changes every six months. Revision of pension re-fixes the basic pension itself and happens once per pay commission. The two are often confused because both increase what the pensioner receives, but they are different instruments on different cycles.

How is a pension revised on the 8th Central Pay Commission?

The 8th Central Pay Commission, constituted in November 2025, will on reporting re-fix the pensions of those already retired, most likely through a fresh fitment factor and a notional pay method into a revised pay structure, operationalised through a new set of concordance tables. No 8th CPC fitment factor, minimum pension, or revised figure can be stated as fact until the Commission reports and revised rules are notified.

External references

References

Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 38/37/2016-P&PW(A)(ii), dated 4 August 2016, revising the pension of pre-2016 pensioners and family pensioners by multiplying the pre-revised basic pension as on 31 December 2015 by the fitment factor of 2.57.
Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 38/37/2016-P&PW(A), dated 12 May 2017, providing the notional pay fixation method (50 per cent of the notional pay in the 7th CPC pay matrix) and directing that the pensioner be granted the higher of the two revised figures.
Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 38/37/2016-P&PW(A), dated 6 July 2017, enclosing Concordance Tables Nos. 1 to 58 for the revision of pension of pre-2016 pensioners and family pensioners under the 7th Central Pay Commission.
7th Central Pay Commission Report (2015), recommendations on the revision of pension of past pensioners, including the notional pay fixation method and the minimum pension of Rs. 9,000.
Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, Office Memorandum No. 38/37/08-P&PW(A), dated 1 September 2008, on the consolidation and modified-parity revision of pre-2006 pensioners under the 6th Central Pay Commission (floor of 50 per cent of the minimum of pay in the pay band plus grade pay), and the additional pension from the age of 80 years under Rule 44(6) of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021.
Income-tax Act, 1961, Section 89, relief on arrears of pension received in a lump sum.
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.