Risk and Hardship Allowance

The Risk and Hardship Allowance is the single matrix of rates that fixes what a central government employee is paid for a duty involving danger, difficulty, or both. It has been in force since 1 July 2017 under Department of Expenditure Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017. The matrix has ten cells: a nine-cell grid of risk (R1 to R3) against hardship (H1 to H3), with a tenth cell, RH-Max, on top. Because risk and hardship carry equal weight the grid is symmetric, so the ten cells resolve into seven distinct rate slabs, and each slab carries two rates, one for Level 9 and above and one for Level 8 and below.

The rates run from Rs. 1,250 a month at the floor to Rs. 31,250 at the highest cell anyone actually draws, both figures being the position since 1 January 2024. Above the matrix altogether sits Siachen Allowance at Rs. 42,500 and Rs. 30,000, the highest hardship rate in the pay system. The 7th Central Pay Commission examined 51 risk and hardship allowances in Chapter 8.10 of its report, subsumed most of them into the cells, and recommended 19 for abolition. What survived kept its own name and its own conditions of admissibility; only the rate now comes from the cell.

The matrix reaches across almost every uniformed and many civilian services. A Central Reserve Police Force jawan on counter-insurgency operations, an Indian Air Force pilot on flying duty, a submariner, a soldier at a high-altitude post, a hospital attendant in continuous contact with communicable disease, a fire-fighter in a defence establishment, a National Disaster Response Force team on deployment and a railway Track Maintainer on the line all draw from cells of the same grid. Placement in a cell is not a statement about seniority: paragraph 8.10.66 of the report states that the matrix compensates risk and hardship in the work environment and “does not determine the status in any way”.

This article sets out the structure and the full rate table, the escalator that lifts every cell when dearness allowance rises, which duty sits in which cell, the derived rates that are percentages of a cell rather than cells themselves, the two allowances carved out of the matrix, who decides an area’s classification, and the leave, concurrency, pension and tax rules that determine what actually reaches the bank account. For the duties that draw the largest amounts see field area allowance, flying allowance and high altitude and Siachen allowance.

Structure of the matrix

The matrix is a three-by-three grid with an extra cell on top, giving ten cells and seven distinct rate slabs. Paragraph 8.10.66 of the 7th Central Pay Commission report states it plainly: “The matrix is divided into 9 cells, based on Low, Medium and High risk juxtaposed with Low, Medium and High hardship. One extra cell has been added to the top: RH-Max to include Siachen Allowance.” Risk runs down the rows as R1, R2 and R3, hardship runs across the columns as H1, H2 and H3, and in each case 1 is high, 2 is medium and 3 is low. R1H1 is therefore high risk with high hardship, and R3H3 is the floor.

Risk and hardship carry equal weight, which makes the grid symmetric about its diagonal. R1H2 pays exactly what R2H1 pays, R1H3 pays what R3H1 pays, and R2H3 pays what R3H2 pays. Those three pairs collapse the nine grid cells into six rate slabs, and RH-Max makes seven. Finding an amount therefore takes two facts and no more: which of the seven slabs the duty falls in, and whether the employee is at Level 9 and above or at Level 8 and below in the pay matrix.

Four further rules from paragraph 8.10.66 govern how the matrix operates, and the first of them is the most consequential in daily administration. Allowances keep their identities: “While the allowances shall maintain their names and conditions attached with their admissibility (unless otherwise stated), they will be paid as per the rate of the cell under which they have been placed.” Field Area Allowance is still called Field Area Allowance and still carries every pre-2016 condition on leave, absence and concurrency; what changed in 2017 is the number. Ministry of Defence letter No. 1(16)/2017/D(Pay/Services) dated 18 September 2017 repeats the same rule at its paragraph 3 for the armed forces.

The remaining three rules are that the rates are monthly amounts, that they rise by 25% each time dearness allowance rises by 50%, and that the amounts increase monotonically as risk or hardship increases. The Commission grouped the existing allowances into cells on three stated grounds: their existing rates, the representations received from the services, and its own first-hand observation during visits.

The design also left room. Paragraph 8.10.71 records that R2H1 “does not subsume any existing allowance”, and paragraph 8.10.73 says the same of R2H3 before recommending that fire-fighting staff be paid at its rate. Two of the nine cells were therefore empty on the day the matrix was notified, which is what paragraph 8.10.65 means when it describes the construct as a framework for placing future allowances rather than a closed list.

Rate table by cell

The base rates were fixed with effect from 1 July 2017 and rose by 25% with effect from 1 January 2024, when dearness allowance reached 50%. All figures are rupees per month.

RH-Max is listed for completeness and nobody is paid at it. Paragraph 8.10.67 placed exactly two allowances in that cell, Siachen Allowance and Antarctica Allowance, and the Government moved both of them out before the Resolution took effect. For the armed forces the Ministry of Defence went further and rewrote the cell: Appendix C of its letter of 18 September 2017 prints RH-Max itself at Rs. 42,500 and Rs. 30,000, the enhanced Siachen rates, so that the top cell as issued to the three Services carries no Rs. 31,500 or Rs. 21,000 figure at all. The Ministry of Home Affairs kept RH-Max at the Commission’s figures and listed Siachen separately against the label. The highest rate drawn from a cell on the Commission’s own numbering is R1H1, at Rs. 31,250 and Rs. 21,625 since 1 January 2024.

The band split is stated by the report itself as “Level >= 9” and “Level <= 8”, meaning the pay level in the 7th CPC pay matrix rather than a rank or a grade pay. The armed forces render the same split operationally as officers against junior commissioned officers and other ranks, and the Central Armed Police Forces as gazetted officers against personnel below officer rank, but the underlying test is the pay level.

The Commission derived the cell rates arithmetically from the allowances each cell was to subsume, and the working is short enough to check. RH-Max is the pre-2016 Siachen Allowance multiplied by 1.5. R1H1 is the average of the four existing Flying Allowance rates above Grade Pay 5400, that is Rs. 15,750, Rs. 21,000, Rs. 16,500 and Rs. 13,500, giving Rs. 16,688, multiplied by 1.5 to give Rs. 25,032, rounded to Rs. 25,000. R1H2 and R2H2 apply the same method to Highly Active Field Area Allowance and Field Area Allowance. R3H1, R3H2 and R3H3 derive from Parts A and B, Part C and Part D of the old Special Compensatory (Remote Locality) Allowance, with the floor lifted so that no allowance in the system falls below Rs. 1,000.

Averaging before multiplying was a deliberate levelling device, and paragraph 8.10.68 says so: a Sepoy’s Flying Allowance went from Rs. 10,500 to Rs. 17,300 rather than to the Rs. 15,750 that a flat factor of 1.5 would have produced.

The 25% escalator linked to dearness allowance

Every cell rises by 25% each time dearness allowance rises by 50 percentage points. Paragraph 8.10.66 of the 7th CPC report states it in one sentence: “The rates will increase further by 25 percent each time DA rises by 50 percent.” Dearness allowance on the revised pay structure stood at 0% on 1 January 2016 and reached 50% with effect from 1 January 2024. That is one 50-point rise, so one 25% step has fallen due, with effect from 1 January 2024, and it is the only one so far. Dearness allowance is 60% from 1 January 2026, which is not a second 50-point rise, so the next 25% step arrives only when dearness allowance reaches 100%.

The matrix escalator is not the house rent allowance escalator, and the two are routinely confused. For house rent allowance the Government overrode the 7th CPC and set upward revisions at dearness allowance crossing 25% and 50%, notified in Department of Expenditure Office Memorandum No. 2/5/2017-E.II(B) dated 7 July 2017. The Risk and Hardship matrix kept the Commission’s original 50-point step untouched. Applying the house rent allowance schedule to the matrix produces a second 25% step that does not exist.

No separate order is issued to give effect to a step. The Department of Expenditure’s standing position, given to the Controller General of Accounts on 20 March 2024 and repeating an identical reply of August 2021, is that the escalation is self-executing and needs no fresh notification. Some ministries have issued confirmatory circulars restating the arithmetic for their own drawing and disbursing officers, among them a Department of Telecommunications Office Memorandum of 20 June 2024 and a Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum of 25 April 2024, but those circulars create nothing. An employee looking for the order that raised a matrix rate on 1 January 2024 will not find one, and its absence is not an oversight.

Dearness allowance is not paid on top of a matrix allowance, which is a separate point that the shared name obscures. Office Memorandum No. 2/5/2017-E.II(B) dated 7 July 2017 defines basic pay for the 7th CPC allowance orders as “the pay drawn in the prescribed pay levels in the Pay Matrix”, excluding non-practising allowance, Military Service Pay and any other type of pay, and paragraph 9 of the Ministry of Defence letter of 18 September 2017 says the same for the forces. Dearness allowance is computed on basic pay alone. The matrix allowance is a flat monthly figure that steps up once every 50 points of dearness allowance and does not otherwise move.

Which duty sits in which cell

The 7th CPC assigned each surviving allowance to a cell at paragraphs 8.10.67 to 8.10.76, one paragraph per cell. The table below reproduces those assignments.

Two of the assignments in R1H1 were policy decisions rather than arithmetic. The CoBRA commando allowance of the Central Reserve Police Force had stood at 80% of the MARCOS rate; paragraph 8.10.68 raised it to parity “in view of the threat of Left Wing Extremism”. The Border Security Force Air Wing was moved from an hourly payment to the R1H1 Flying Allowance rate. In R1H2, Counter-Insurgency Operations Allowance in field areas was raised from 93% of Highly Active Field Area Allowance to 100%, which is why the two now share a cell rather than sitting a few hundred rupees apart.

Placement in a cell does not by itself create an entitlement. Each allowance retains its own eligibility conditions, so a posting to a location in a classified area, or performance of the qualifying duty, remains the test. The cell supplies the rate and nothing else.

Derived rates that are not cells

Several rates in the risk and hardship family are fixed percentages of a cell rather than cells in their own right, and they do not appear in the matrix table at all. Looking for them there is the commonest reason a reader concludes a figure is missing.

Modified Field Area Allowance is 60% of the R2H2 cell. Paragraph 8.10.72 raised it from the pre-2016 figure of 40%: it “will now be paid at 60 percent of Field Area Allowance, or 60 percent of the rate of this cell”. Appendix A of the Ministry of Defence letter of 18 September 2017 prints the result as Rs. 6,300 a month for officers and Rs. 3,600 for junior commissioned officers and other ranks, being 60% of Rs. 10,500 and Rs. 6,000. From 1 January 2024 those figures are Rs. 7,875 and Rs. 4,500.

Counter-Insurgency Operations Allowance in a Modified Field Area is 77% of the R1H2 cell, a percentage paragraph 8.10.69 carried over unchanged from the pre-2016 position. The Ministry of Defence letter prints Rs. 13,013 for officers and Rs. 7,469 for junior commissioned officers and other ranks at the base, and the Central Reserve Police Force circular of 8 March 2019 reproduces the same two figures for the paramilitary forces. From 1 January 2024 they are Rs. 16,266.25 and Rs. 9,336.25.

Two smaller derived rates complete the set. Para Reserve Allowance is one fourth of Para Allowance, and Hardlying Money at half rate is half of the R3H3 cell. In the other direction, paragraph 8.10.72 provides that Border Out Posts are to be treated as Field Areas for the purposes of the matrix, and that the allowance at air-maintained Border Out Posts requiring a foot march of five days or more is to be enhanced by a further 25%, which is the only upward derivation in the chapter.

Siachen and Antarctica: the two carve-outs

Both allowances the 7th CPC placed in RH-Max were removed from it, for opposite reasons: RH-Max was too low for Siachen and too high a change of form for Antarctica.

Siachen Allowance was fixed above the matrix. The pre-2016 rates were Rs. 21,000 a month for officers and Rs. 14,000 for junior commissioned officers and other ranks, and paragraph 8.10.67 proposed RH-Max, that is Rs. 31,500 and Rs. 21,000. The Department of Expenditure press note recording the Cabinet decision of 28 June 2017 states that “recognizing the extreme nature of risk and hardship faced by officers / PBORs on continuous basis in Siachen, the Government has decided to further enhance the rates of Siachen Allowance which will now go up from the existing rate from Rs. 14,000 to Rs. 30,000 per month for Jawans & JCOs (Level 8 and below) and from Rs. 21,000 to Rs. 42,500 per month for Officers (Level 9 and above)”. Those rates were notified in the Resolution of 6 July 2017 and implemented for the forces by Appendix A, item 22 of the Ministry of Defence letter of 18 September 2017, and for the Central Armed Police Forces and the Assam Rifles by serial number 1 of the rate table at paragraph 2 of Ministry of Home Affairs OM No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017.

The Siachen decision broke the Commission’s own ceiling. Paragraphs 8.10.66 and 8.10.67 make RH-Max “the ceiling for risk/hardship allowances” and state that “no RHA can have a value higher than this allowance”. Rs. 42,500 is higher than Rs. 31,500, and the same Resolution that adopted the ceiling exceeded it. The Ministry of Defence resolved the awkwardness by resetting RH-Max in Appendix C to Rs. 42,500 and Rs. 30,000, so that for the Services the Siachen rate is the top cell rather than an exception to it. The escalator applies to the enhanced figures, which paragraph 10 of Ministry of Home Affairs OM No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017 states in terms of a rate table headed by Siachen Allowance at Rs. 42,500 and Rs. 30,000, and which paragraph 8.2.4 of the 7th CPC report confirms by naming Siachen Allowance as an example of an allowance that rises 25% at each 50-point step. One step has fallen due, giving Rs. 53,125 and Rs. 37,500 from 1 January 2024. See High Altitude and Siachen Allowance for the derivation.

Antarctica Allowance was taken out of the matrix in the other direction, because the monthly cell rate would have cut it. Members of the Indian scientific expeditions run by the Ministry of Earth Sciences were drawing per-day rates before 2016: Rs. 1,856.80 in winter and Rs. 1,237.50 in summer for a team leader, Rs. 1,688.00 and Rs. 1,125.00 for other members. An expedition runs from about three months to over a year, so paragraph 5.5.1 of the Committee on Allowances report recommended that the allowance “be taken out of the R&H Matrix and continue to be paid on a per day basis as at present”. The rates fixed were Rs. 2,000 a day in winter and Rs. 1,500 a day in summer, with team leaders continuing to draw 10% above those rates. The Ministry of Earth Sciences had asked for 20%. The whole item costs Rs. 3.01 crore a year and reaches about 120 employees.

Linked allowances outside the matrix

Paragraph 8.10.77 lists three items as linked to the matrix without being in it, and only the first of the three carries the 25% escalator.

Diving Allowance, Dip Money and Attendant Allowance continue on their own rates. The paragraph provides that they “will continued to be paid as hitherto”, that the rates are increased by 50%, and that “the rate will further rise by 25 percent each time DA crosses 50 percent”. Appendix B of the Ministry of Defence letter of 18 September 2017 carries the figures: Diving Allowance for clearance and deep diving officers moved from Rs. 1,200 to Rs. 1,800 a month, and for a Clearance Diver Class I from Rs. 900 to Rs. 1,350; Dip Money up to 20 fathoms moved from Rs. 1.80 to Rs. 2.70 a minute, and at 75 to 100 fathoms from Rs. 11.40 to Rs. 17.10; Attendant Allowance remains one fifth of Dip Money. All three extend to Indian Air Force and Army personnel on a pro-rata basis when they perform such duties.

Detachment Allowance and Ration Money Allowance appear in the paragraph only because of their interaction with Counter-Insurgency Operations Allowance for the Central Armed Police Forces, and paragraph 8.10.77(b) is express that they are not in the nature of risk and hardship allowances. Neither carries the matrix escalator. The interaction matters in practice: the Central Reserve Police Force circular of 8 March 2019 records that personnel eligible for a matrix allowance “may change their option for drawal of RHA or Dett Allowance as per new RHA classification whichever is beneficial to them”, so a member elects between the two rather than drawing both. Ration money allowance is dealt with as a separate entitlement.

Left Wing Extremism Risk Allowance was found to be no allowance at all. Paragraph 8.10.77(c) records that it “is not a separate allowance, but paid as CI Ops Allowance in Field, Modified or Peace Areas”, and that a separate name for it is not required.

The four kinds of rate in the risk and hardship family are worth separating, because they behave differently on every dimension a reader cares about.

Who classifies an area and places a duty in a cell

Classification is done separately by the Ministry of Defence for defence personnel and by the Ministry of Home Affairs for the Central Armed Police Forces. The 7th CPC recommended otherwise. Paragraph 8.10.72 records a demand from the paramilitary forces that field areas be classified jointly, and accepts it:

There is a strong demand from CAPFs that the classification of Field Areas into Highly Active, Field or Modified, which is presently done by Ministry of Defence, should be done jointly by Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Home Affairs for places where CAPFs are deployed. The Commission finds the demand reasonable after taking into account the first-hand experience during its visits at various places. Hence, it is recommended that a joint committee of Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Defence should revisit the present classification of places, and future categorizations should also be done as a joint exercise for places where CAPFs are posted.

The Government declined. The press note recording the Cabinet decision of 28 June 2017 states at item 7(v) that “classification of field areas for this allowance will be done by Ministry of Defence for Defence personnel and by Ministry of Home Affairs for CAPFs”, which is two unilateral exercises rather than one joint one. What the Ministry of Home Affairs then did, at paragraph 8 of Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017, was constitute “a committee under the Chairmanship of the Union Home Secretary for Classification of Field Areas for grant of Risk & Hardship Allowance to CAPFs”. That is a Ministry of Home Affairs committee for paramilitary areas, not the joint body the Commission asked for.

The tier definitions the classifying authority applies are at paragraph 8.10.18. A Highly Active Field Area is one “where grave danger exists to troops, airmen, fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters due to deployment in close proximity of enemy”. A Field Area is one “where troops are deployed near the borders for operational considerations, and where hostilities and risk to life are imminent”. A Modified Field Area is one “where defence personnel/isolated detachments are deployed/stationed/mobilized in support of military duties and where imminence of hostilities/violence and risk exist”, and may also have “severe infrastructural deficiencies causing deprivation and/or mental strain”.

Because two ministries classify the same terrain independently, the same cell label can attach to materially different duties across services, and a specific posting is governed by the order of the ministry that administers it rather than by the matrix table.

Central Armed Police Forces and the matrix

Personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces draw from the matrix at the same cell rates as the armed forces for comparable duty. The Ministry of Home Affairs issued the placing order, Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017, covering the Central Reserve Police Force, Border Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Central Industrial Security Force, Sashastra Seema Bal and Assam Rifles. The first review by the Home Secretary’s committee, Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/2017-PF(Pt.II) dated 22 February 2019, reclassified areas in Jammu and Kashmir and the Left Wing Extremism districts with eleven annexures of area lists, effective from the date of that order. The matrix applies up to the rank of Commandant in field units.

The placements follow the work. A CoBRA commando of the Central Reserve Police Force draws R1H1 at Rs. 31,250 or Rs. 21,625 a month, at parity with the naval MARCOS since paragraph 8.10.68 removed the 80% differential. A constable on counter-insurgency operations draws R1H2 at Rs. 12,125 in a field area, 77% of that figure in a modified field area, and R2H2 at Rs. 7,500 in a peace area. A jawan at a high-altitude border post draws the cell that matches the altitude category. This is the allowance a CAPF Constable or a Sub-Inspector actually receives on a field posting, over and above the pay of the level in the pay matrix, and it is separate from basic pay in every respect.

The cell a paramilitary member draws from changes with each posting, because the allowance attaches to the duty and the location and not to the person or the rank. It rises on a move into a more active area, falls on a move out, and stops when the qualifying duty ends. For the wider service and its pay structure see Central Armed Police Forces.

Civilian categories that draw from the matrix

The matrix is not a defence and paramilitary instrument alone. Several wholly civilian categories were placed in cells by the 7th CPC or by their administering ministries.

Tough Location Allowance is the widest of these by headcount, because it absorbed the old Special Compensatory (Remote Locality), bad climate, tribal area and Sunderban allowances that applied to civilian employees at qualifying locations across the country. The Special Compensatory (Hill Area) Allowance is not on that list: paragraph 8.10.80 abolished it outright rather than subsuming it, and it is dealt with below. Paragraph 8.10.62 maps the four subsumed items to tiers, sending Parts A and B of the remote-locality allowance to Tough Location Allowance-I, Part C to Tough Location Allowance-II, and the bad climate, tribal area and Sunderban allowances with Part D to Tough Location Allowance-III. Paragraph 8.10.63 provides that where a place falls in more than one category the higher rate applies, and it also barred Tough Location Allowance alongside special duty allowance. The Government modified that bar: the press note of 28 June 2017 records at item 5 that employees were given the option to draw the old Special Compensatory (Remote Locality) Allowance at pre-revised rates along with special duty allowance at revised rates, which is a choice rather than a prohibition. See special compensatory remote locality allowance and project allowance.

Boiler Watch Keeping Allowance sits in R3H1 but is not civilian: paragraph 8.10.7 records that it is paid to boiler watch keepers on naval ships and to corresponding personnel on Coast Guard and survey ships. The Indian Coast Guard was separately brought to parity with the Navy on allowances not mentioned in the report by the Resolution of 6 July 2017.

Hospital Patient Care and Patient Care Allowance

Both allowances sit in cell R1H3 at Rs. 6,625 a month for Level 9 and above and Rs. 5,125 for Level 8 and below since 1 January 2024, from base rates of Rs. 5,300 and Rs. 4,100 fixed on 1 July 2017. The band split is the standard Level 8 and Level 9 split used throughout the matrix. Paragraph 5.5.4 of the Committee on Allowances report states the recommendation in those terms, and the Resolution of 6 July 2017 as reproduced by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and by Railway Board RBE No. 15/2018 uses the identical formula.

The two allowances are distinguished by the institution, not by the work. Hospital Patient Care Allowance is paid in hospitals; Patient Care Allowance is paid in health care delivery institutions other than hospitals, which paragraph 8.10.29 defines as those with fewer than 30 beds. Three conditions in that paragraph limit both: the employee’s regular duties must involve continuous and routine contact with patients infected with communicable disease, or routine handling of infected materials, as a primary duty; occasional contact does not qualify; and employees working at headquarters are excluded. Pre-revised rates were Rs. 2,100 a month for Group C and Rs. 2,085 for Group D under the hospital allowance, and Rs. 2,070 for both under the other.

Eligibility has moved twice since 2017 and no longer matches the Group C and Group D description in the 7th CPC report. The Commission had recommended at paragraph 8.10.70 that payment to ministerial staff “should be stopped”, on the ground that the allowance belongs to those in continuous contact with patients. The Committee on Allowances disagreed, holding that “working on hospital premises does involve an element of risk”, and the Cabinet accepted the modification, so ministerial staff on hospital premises continued to draw R1H3 at a cost of about Rs. 30 crore a year across roughly 15,000 employees. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Office Memorandum No. Z.28015/119/2012-H dated 18 September 2019 then extended both allowances upward, to all Group A and Group B non-ministerial allied healthcare professionals in central government healthcare facilities with effect from 1 July 2017. Office Memorandum No. V.28017/23/2018-H-II dated 21 April 2023 reversed the 2017 concession and discontinued payment to ministerial staff of all groups from the date of issue, directing all ministries including Railways, Defence and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences to stop it, without recovery of amounts already paid. That order has been challenged before the Central Administrative Tribunal.

Nursing personnel are excluded from both allowances and draw Nursing Allowance instead. The exclusion is express at paragraph 8.10.29, and the reason is recorded at paragraph 5.5.4 of the Committee on Allowances report: the Ministry of Health had asked for R1H3 for nurses and R1H2 for doctors, and the Committee refused both because doctors draw non-practising allowance at 20% of basic pay and nurses draw Nursing Allowance, which the same Committee was raising by a factor of 1.5 to Rs. 7,200 a month. A nurse and a hospital attendant on the same ward therefore draw from different parts of the pay system by design, not by oversight.

Effect of leave, temporary duty and suspension

Leave of more than 30 days taken at a stretch stops a matrix allowance for the whole period of that leave. The rule began as a field area provision: paragraph 8.10.72 records that Highly Active Field Area, Field Area and Modified Field Area Allowance were stopped where an employee proceeded on leave for more than fifteen days, and recommends that “this ceiling should be raised from fifteen days to thirty days”. The Ministry of Home Affairs, in consultation with its Integrated Finance Division, applied the same 30-day test to all Risk and Hardship Allowances for the Central Armed Police Forces by a clarification of 13 September 2019, holding that its Office Memorandum of 31 July 2017 contains no calendar-month condition and that leave of any kind exceeding 30 days makes the person ineligible for the period. The Ministry of Defence adopted the identical position for defence civilian fire-fighting staff in 2020, and the Central Reserve Police Force circularised recovery in October 2020 with the clarification that the bar bites only where more than 30 days is availed at a stretch, and that leave of under 30 days is not counted.

Older and stricter limits survive wherever the allowance’s own conditions were not superseded, because paragraph 8.10.66 preserved every pre-2016 condition of admissibility. Several field-type allowances carried casual leave and temporary duty limits well below 30 days before 2016, and those continue to bind for the allowances that kept them. The governing instrument is the administering ministry’s order for that named allowance, not the matrix.

Temporary duty away from the qualifying location is treated as absence from the area under the same allowance-specific conditions. Hospitalisation arising from an injury sustained on the qualifying duty is not addressed anywhere in Chapter 8.10, in the Resolution of 6 July 2017 or in the Ministry of Defence letter of 18 September 2017; the position depends on whether the absence is classified as leave under the conditions of the particular allowance.

Suspension stops the allowance as a matter of ordinary application, though no order says so about the matrix specifically. Fundamental Rule 53 gives a suspended government servant subsistence allowance, dearness allowance on it, and other compensatory allowances “subject to the fulfilment of other conditions laid down for the drawal of such allowances”. A matrix allowance is payable only while the qualifying duty is actually performed at the qualifying location, so those conditions cannot be met during suspension.

Whether two allowances can be drawn together

Nothing in the matrix permits or bars drawing two matrix allowances at once. Paragraph 8.10.78 leaves the question exactly where it was before 2016: “Concurrent admissibility of allowances, applicable to Defence personnel, shall remain unaltered and its applicability should be extended mutatis mutandis to CAPF personnel posted in field areas.” Read with the rule at paragraph 8.10.66 that each allowance keeps its own conditions of admissibility, this means the pre-2016 concurrency instructions of the Ministry of Defence continue to decide each pair, and they are not uniform. Siachen Allowance is admissible in addition to Compensatory Field Area Allowance but not alongside High Altitude Allowance. High Altitude Allowance is admissible with Compensatory Field Area Allowance where its own conditions are met.

Three specific election rules operate alongside that framework. Within Tough Location Allowance, paragraph 8.10.63 provides that where a place falls in more than one category “the higher rate of Tough Location Allowance will be applicable”. Between Tough Location Allowance and special duty allowance, the Government replaced the Commission’s prohibition with an option, as noted above. For the Central Armed Police Forces, the Ministry of Home Affairs order of 22 February 2019 as circulated by the Central Reserve Police Force gives an election between a matrix allowance and Detachment Allowance, whichever is more beneficial.

There is a ceiling on any single allowance and no cap on the total. Paragraph 8.10.66 makes RH-Max “the ceiling for risk/hardship allowances” and states that “the amount of no individual RHA should be more than this allowance”, and paragraph 8.10.67 repeats that “no RHA can have a value higher than this allowance”. The operative words are “individual RHA”. No provision in Chapter 8.10, the Resolution of 6 July 2017 or the Ministry of Defence letter of 18 September 2017 caps an aggregate. The contrast with Extra Work Allowance is instructive: there the 7th CPC wrote an express cap of 2% of basic pay however many add-on duties are performed, and it wrote no such cap for the matrix.

Reckonability for pension, gratuity and the NPS contribution

A Risk and Hardship Allowance counts for none of the three. Rule 31 of the CCS (Pension) Rules 2021 defines emoluments for pension as the basic pay under the Fundamental Rules 1922 drawn immediately before retirement or death, plus non-practising allowance granted to a medical officer in lieu of private practice, with stagnation increment added by the Explanation. No other allowance enters, and rule 32 computes average emoluments over the last ten months on the same basis.

Retirement gratuity adds one item to that figure and one only, the dearness allowance admissible on the date of retirement or death. A matrix allowance is not added, even where it has been drawn continuously for a full career on the frontier.

Rule 5(1) of the CCS (Implementation of National Pension System) Rules 2021, notified by G.S.R. 227(E) dated 30 March 2021, limits the contribution base to “basic pay as defined in rule 9(21)(a)(i) of the Fundamental Rules, 1922, non-practicing allowance granted to medical officer in lieu of private practice and admissible dearness allowance in a calendar month”. Neither the employee’s contribution under rule 6 nor the Government’s under rule 7 is computed on a matrix allowance, and the Unified Pension Scheme operates on the same base as the National Pension System.

The practical consequence is worth stating in cash. A jawan drawing Highly Active Field Area Allowance at Rs. 12,125 a month for twenty years of a career adds nothing to his pension by having drawn it, because the entire amount sits outside the definition of emoluments. Every rupee of pension value comes from the basic pay of the level, which is why the pay level and not the posting drives the retirement outcome.

Tax treatment

Under the default new regime every risk and hardship allowance is fully taxable, without exception, and that includes Siachen. For the tax year 2026-27 the governing law is the Income-tax Act, 2025 (Act No. 30 of 2025), in force from 1 April 2026, whose Section 202 carries the default regime formerly in Section 115BAC and whose Schedule III carries the prescribed-allowance exemptions formerly in Section 10(14). The subordinate rules are 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, which replaced the Income-tax Rules, 1962 from the same date. The restriction is unchanged in substance: a new-regime assessee keeps only the travel, daily and conveyance allowances and the transport allowance for a disabled employee, and no risk or hardship entry survives it.

Under the old regime a short list of capped exemptions applies. The provisions below are cited in their pre-2026 numbering, Section 10(14) of the repealed Income-tax Act 1961 read with Rule 2BB(2) of the repealed Income-tax Rules 1962, because that is the numbering the orders and the case law use; the entries and the caps carry into the Schedule III scheme unchanged in amount. The entries that touch this family are these.

Two provisos bar double counting: an assessee claiming serial number 7 or 8 cannot also claim the border area and remote locality exemption at serial number 2, and an assessee claiming serial number 9 cannot also claim the disturbed area exemption at serial number 2.

Nothing else in the matrix family appears anywhere in Rule 2BB. There is no exemption for RH-Max, Flying Allowance, Submarine Allowance, the MARCOS, Special Forces or CoBRA allowances, Sea Going Allowance, the parachute allowances, Hospital Patient Care Allowance, Tough Location Allowance as such, Project Allowance, Boiler Watch Keeping Allowance, Hardlying Money, Diving Allowance, Antarctica Allowance, or the allowance paid to Track Maintainers and fire-fighting staff.

The caps have been overtaken by the allowances they were written for. They were fixed long before the 7th CPC and were not revised when the matrix multiplied the underlying amounts by roughly 1.5 and then by a further 25%. A jawan drawing Highly Active Field Area Allowance at Rs. 12,125 a month has Rs. 4,200 exempt under serial number 14, about 35% of it. An officer on Siachen at Rs. 42,500 has Rs. 7,000 exempt under serial number 1, item II, about 16%. A soldier on counter-insurgency operations at Rs. 21,125 has Rs. 3,900 exempt, about 18%. For the comparison across regimes see old versus new tax regime and income tax for central government employees.

Distinction from Military Service Pay

Military Service Pay is a pay element and a matrix allowance is a duty payment, and the two are drawn on different triggers. Military Service Pay is added to the pay of defence personnel for the special conditions of military service as a whole, is drawn regardless of the posting of the moment, and is confined to the armed forces. A matrix allowance is paid from a cell only while the qualifying risk or hardship duty is actually being performed, and is drawn by defence, paramilitary and civilian employees alike.

A soldier on a field posting draws both at once: Military Service Pay for being in military service, and the cell rate for the duty held at the time. A Central Armed Police Forces constable in the same terrain draws the cell rate and no Military Service Pay. That asymmetry is the single largest source of error in comparisons between army and paramilitary pay, because a headline figure that omits Military Service Pay understates the soldier’s package while a figure that assumes it for a constable overstates the paramilitary one.

Neither payment enters the definition of basic pay. Office Memorandum No. 2/5/2017-E.II(B) dated 7 July 2017 excludes Military Service Pay from basic pay for allowance purposes in the same clause that excludes non-practising allowance and any other type of pay, and the matrix allowance was never within it.

Allowances abolished rather than subsumed

Nineteen allowances were abolished outright by paragraph 8.10.80 and did not enter the matrix at all, which is a different outcome from being subsumed into a cell. The list includes Risk Allowance itself, Commando Allowance for the Delhi Police, Night Patrolling Allowance, Operation Theatre Allowance and Special Compensatory (Hill Area) Allowance. The reasoning on the hill area allowance shows the method: the Commission abolished it and extended High Altitude Allowance to civilian employees at locations where no Tough Location Allowance or other risk and hardship allowance is admissible, so the coverage survived while the separate name did not.

The wider rationalisation was on the same scale. The 7th CPC examined 197 allowances across all chapters, recommended abolishing 53 and subsuming 37. The Government declined to abolish 12 of the 53 and allowed 3 of the 37 to continue separately, leaving 128 allowances in place against the 197 it started with. The Cabinet approved the allowance recommendations on 28 June 2017 with 34 modifications, of which the Committee on Allowances had itself proposed 13. The financial effect was Rs. 30,748.23 crore a year, being the Commission’s projection of Rs. 29,300 crore plus Rs. 1,448.23 crore for the modifications. No cell rate in the matrix was among the modifications: all ten cells were accepted exactly as recommended, and what the Government changed sat at the edges, in Siachen, Antarctica, the patient care allowances and the Tough Location option. For the wider list see allowances abolished by the 7th CPC and allowances for central government employees.

One recommendation was accepted in principle and never carried out. Paragraph 8.10.79 asked for an expert committee to build a composite difficulty and hardship index mapping altitude, temperature and remoteness across the country, endorsing a similar proposal of the 5th Central Pay Commission and citing the Remoteness Index used in Australia. No such committee has been constituted, so placement in a cell still rests on the classifying ministry’s judgment rather than on a published index.

Bearing on the 8th Central Pay Commission

No 8th Central Pay Commission position on the matrix exists. The Commission was constituted by a Ministry of Finance notification of 3 November 2025, following Cabinet approval of its terms of reference on 28 October 2025 and an in-principle announcement in January 2025. Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, is the chairperson, with Pankaj Jain as member-secretary and Professor Pulak Ghosh as part-time member. The terms of reference cover the central civil services including the All India Services, defence personnel, union territory administrations, the Indian Audit and Accounts Department, and regulatory bodies other than the Reserve Bank of India, and give the Commission 18 months from constitution to report, with liberty to submit interim reports.

The terms of reference name four guiding factors: economic conditions and the need for fiscal prudence, resources for developmental and welfare expenditure, the unfunded cost of non-contributory pension schemes, and the likely impact on state finances. None of them points to a particular outcome for risk and hardship rates.

Whether the 8th Central Pay Commission retains the matrix, re-rates the ten cells, changes the 25% escalator or restructures the carve-outs is unknown, and no figure for the position after it reports can be stated. The position until then is the ten cells at the rates enhanced from 1 January 2024, Siachen above the matrix at Rs. 42,500 and Rs. 30,000, and the next escalator step falling due when dearness allowance reaches 100%.

Related Articles

• Field area allowance
• Flying allowance
• High altitude and Siachen allowance
• Antarctica allowance
• Counter-insurgency operations allowance
• Submarine allowance
• Sea going allowance
• Diving allowance
• Detachment allowance
• Hospital patient care allowance
• Tough location allowance
• Special compensatory remote locality allowance
• Project allowance
• Special duty allowance
• Island special duty allowance
• Hard area allowance
• Ration money allowance
• Nursing allowance
• Non-practising allowance
• Military Service Pay
• Allowances abolished by the 7th CPC
• Allowances for central government employees
• Central Armed Police Forces
• Central Reserve Police Force
• CAPF Constable salary
• Sub-Inspector salary
• Central government jobs
• Dearness allowance
• House-rent allowance
• Transport allowance
• Dress allowance
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• 8th Central Pay Commission
• Pay matrix
• Department of Expenditure
• Central government pension
• Gratuity
• National Pension System
• Unified Pension Scheme
• Suspension
• Central Administrative Tribunal
• Income tax for government employees
• Old versus new tax regime
• Salary by pay level
• 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 press note on the Cabinet decision of 28 June 2017 on 7th CPC allowances
• Ministry of Defence, revised rates of allowances under the 7th CPC
• Rule 2BB of the Income-tax Rules 1962, Income Tax Department
• Ministry of Home Affairs
• Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance

References

1. Report of the Seventh Central Pay Commission (19 November 2015), Chapter 8.10 “Allowances related to Risk and Hardship”: paragraph 8.10.61 (the two-slab design), 8.10.62 and 8.10.63 (Tough Location Allowance), 8.10.64 to 8.10.66 (the matrix, its salient features and the 25% escalator), 8.10.67 to 8.10.76 (the ten cells and their contents), 8.10.77 (linked allowances), 8.10.78 (concurrent admissibility), 8.10.79 (the proposed hardship index) and 8.10.80 (the 19 allowances abolished).
2. Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure Resolution No. 11-1/2016-IC dated 6 July 2017: Government decision on the 7th CPC recommendations relating to allowances, effective 1 July 2017, adopting the Risk and Hardship matrix with 34 modifications including the Siachen and Antarctica carve-outs.
3. Department of Expenditure press note on the Cabinet decision of 28 June 2017: item 3 (Siachen Allowance at Rs. 42,500 and Rs. 30,000), item 5 (the Tough Location and special duty allowance option), item 7(v) (classification of field areas by the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Home Affairs separately), item 9(iii) (patient care allowances extended to ministerial staff) and item 11(ii) (Antarctica Allowance at Rs. 2,000 and Rs. 1,500 a day).
4. Report of the Committee on Allowances (27 April 2017), paragraph 5.5.1 (Antarctica Allowance taken out of the matrix) and paragraph 5.5.4 (patient care allowances at cell R1H3 for Level 9 and above and Level 8 and below, and the refusal of R1H3 for nursing personnel).
5. Ministry of Defence letter No. 1(16)/2017/D(Pay/Services) dated 18 September 2017, with Appendix A (risk and hardship allowances), Appendix B (other allowances) and Appendix C (the matrix): implementation for the armed forces with effect from 1 July 2017, including Modified Field Area Allowance at 60% of cell R2H2 and Counter-Insurgency Operations Allowance in modified field areas at 77% of cell R1H2.
6. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/CF-3396706/2017-PF-I dated 31 July 2017: grant of Risk and Hardship Allowance to Central Armed Police Forces personnel, with paragraph 8 constituting the Union Home Secretary’s committee on classification of field areas.
7. Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. II-27012/40/2017-PF(Pt.II) dated 22 February 2019: revised classification of field areas in Jammu and Kashmir and the Left Wing Extremism districts, circulated by the Central Reserve Police Force on 8 March 2019.
8. Railway Board RBE No. 87/2017, File No. PC-VII/2017/I/7/5/4 dated 10 August 2017: Risk and Hardship Allowance at cell R3H2 for Track Maintainers I to IV, effective 1 July 2017.
9. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Office Memorandum No. Z.28015/119/2012-H dated 18 September 2019 (extension of the patient care allowances to Group A and Group B non-ministerial allied healthcare professionals) and Office Memorandum No. V.28017/23/2018-H-II dated 21 April 2023 (discontinuance for ministerial staff).
10. Rule 2BB of the Income-tax Rules 1962: sub-rule (2), serial numbers 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14 and 15 (the capped exemptions under Section 10(14) of the Income-tax Act 1961) and sub-rule (3), substituted by Notification 43/2023 (allowances exempt under Section 115BAC).
11. CCS (Pension) Rules 2021, rules 31 and 32; CCS (Implementation of National Pension System) Rules 2021, notified by G.S.R. 227(E) dated 30 March 2021, rule 5(1).
12. Ministry of Finance notification dated 3 November 2025 constituting the 8th Central Pay Commission and notifying its terms of reference.