Retirement Dues and Family Pension: Questions and Answers

Write to your Head of Office and the Pay and Accounts Office asking which stage your case is at on Bhavishya and when the PPO will issue. Keep a copy with proof of dispatch. Ask for provisional pension too, because Rule 62 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 allows it when the PPO is held up. If a month passes without a real answer, register on CPENGRAMS and prepare a representation that can later support a pension delay case.

Your basic pension is 50 per cent of your last basic pay or of the average basic pay of your last ten months, whichever is more for you (Rule 44 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021). Once you have ten years of qualifying service, the 50 per cent is not cut down for shorter service. Dearness relief is added on top at the current rate. HRA, transport allowance and similar allowances are not counted, but the non-practising allowance of doctors is.

Yes. Since the Seventh Pay Commission, the minimum pension and the minimum family pension are both Rs 9,000 a month, and the maximum pension is Rs 1,25,000, which is half the highest pay of Rs 2,50,000. Both figures are before dearness relief. So a Group C retiree whose 50 per cent works out lower still gets Rs 9,000. A PPO showing less than the minimum is an obvious error and should be raised at once.

You get a one-time service gratuity in place of monthly pension: half a month's emoluments for each completed six-monthly period of service. Retirement gratuity is paid as well if you have five years or more. Check the count before accepting it. Under the rounding rule, 9 years and 9 months is treated as 10 years, and an earlier central job, temporary status service or a wrongly excluded spell can carry you over the line. See how qualifying service is counted.

Retirement gratuity is one quarter of your emoluments for every completed six-monthly period of qualifying service, up to 16.5 times emoluments, with an overall ceiling of Rs 25 lakh (raised from Rs 20 lakh with effect from 1 January 2024 when DA reached 50 per cent; check the current ceiling). Emoluments here means basic pay plus DA on the date of retirement. The usual gratuity calculation mistakes are leaving out DA, using an older DA rate, or miscounting the half-years. At least five years of qualifying service is needed.

No. Six times is the slab for one to five years. For five years or more but under eleven years, death gratuity is twelve times the monthly emoluments, meaning basic pay plus DA on the date of death. The other slabs are two times for under one year, twenty times for eleven to twenty years, and beyond twenty years half of emoluments for every completed six-monthly period, up to 33 times. The Rs 25 lakh ceiling applies. Write to the office pointing out the slab and ask for a corrected sanction.

A nomination in favour of someone who has died stops operating unless an alternate nominee was named. The gratuity is then paid in equal shares to the members of the family who come first under the pension rules, usually the surviving children. Give the office your mother's death certificate along with the claim. If brothers and sisters disagree, the office may ask for indemnity or legal heir proof, and that quarrel is for a civil court, not the tribunal.

It can adjust government dues that have been worked out and told to you, such as licence fee, damages for overstaying in quarters or an unpaid advance, under Rules 67 to 69 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021. It must give you the figure and the basis. It cannot sit on the whole gratuity for an open-ended 'no dues pending' reason. Ask in writing for the dues statement, pay or dispute each item, and press for release of the balance.

Yes. If departmental or judicial proceedings are pending on the date of retirement, you get provisional pension and the gratuity waits until a final order is passed. If you come out fully cleared, gratuity is paid and interest is generally allowed from the date it fell due (check the current DoPPW orders). What you can fight is delay. An inquiry that drifts for years after retirement can be pushed by a representation and then a CAT case asking for a decision within a fixed time.

From the day after retirement, subsistence allowance stops and provisional pension starts. Gratuity is held, and leave encashment may be withheld, until the case ends. How the suspension period is treated, whether as duty or not, is decided at the end under FR 54-B, and that decision can change your qualifying service and final pension. So keep your claim for that period alive in every representation. Read more on provisional pension during a pending case.

It should be. Provisional pension is pension for the purpose of dearness relief, so DR at the current rate is payable with it. Provisional pension itself should be the full pension your qualifying service earns, not a token amount. If the bank or PAO is paying bare provisional pension without DR, send the Head of Office and the PAO a short letter with the sanction order attached. This is usually corrected without any case.

Up to 40 per cent of basic pension. The lump sum is the commuted part multiplied by 12 and by the commutation factor for your age on your next birthday, taken from the table under the CCS (Commutation of Pension) Rules, 1981. Your monthly pension falls by the commuted amount and is restored fifteen years from the date the lump sum was paid. Dearness relief keeps running on the full, uncommuted pension throughout. Disputes on restoration dates are covered under commutation and restoration.

No. The reduction should start only from the date the commuted value is actually paid to you. If the bank cut the pension earlier, the difference for those months is to be refunded. Write to the bank's Centralised Pension Processing Centre with your PPO, your passbook entries and the date of credit, and copy the PAO. There is no interest on a late commuted value under the DoPPW order of October 2022, so the refund of wrongly cut pension is what you chase.

Often yes. If the application was made before retirement, commutation usually becomes absolute on the day after retirement; if made later without a medical test, on the date the office received it. When death comes after that date, the commuted value is payable to the family even though he never received it. When death comes before it, there is no commutation, and family pension is worked out on his full pension. The dates on the forms decide this, so find the office copy.

Up to 300 days in all, earned leave and half pay leave together. Earned leave is counted first. If your earned leave is below 300 days, half pay leave can fill the gap. For earned leave you get a day's pay plus DA for each day; half pay leave is paid at the lower half pay rate. If old leave was never credited in your service book, raise it before retirement. Rebuilding a thirty-year leave account after the PPO is out takes far longer.

Yes, but only by a decision, not by default. Rule 39(3) of the CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972 lets the competent authority withhold all or part of the leave encashment of someone who retires under suspension or with disciplinary or criminal proceedings pending, if it thinks money may be recoverable at the end. Ask for that order in writing. When the case ends, the balance after any recovery actually ordered must be released, and a long delay can support a claim for interest on delayed dues.

Your Head of Office has to send revised pension papers to the PAO on the new pay, and the PAO issues a revised PPO with arrears of pension, gratuity and leave encashment where these change. It is routine work, but it stalls when nobody owns it. Write to the Head of Office with a copy of the MACP order and the original PPO. When Advocate B.K. Singh sees this kind of file, the first thing he asks for is the date of the MACP order, because it decides the revised figures.

The bank first. Pension is paid by the authorised bank's Centralised Pension Processing Centre strictly as per the PPO and the DR orders, so a short payment is the bank's mistake to correct. Write to the CPPC with your PPO number and the months affected, and copy the paying branch. If it does not fix it, the RBI's banking ombudsman handles bank errors, and the Central Pension Accounting Office can be approached for central civil pensioners. A wrong figure in the PPO itself is a different matter for the PAO and, if needed, the tribunal.

No. Pension is only held back, not forfeited. Once you give the life certificate through Jeevan Pramaan, the bank branch, a doorstep service or the India Post Payments Bank, the bank should restart pension and pay the stopped months. Pensioners aged 80 and above can submit from 1 October. If the bank sits on the arrears after you have submitted, complain to its CPPC and keep the Jeevan Pramaan acknowledgment as proof.

No. The additional pension at 80 is due from the first day of the month in which the birthday falls, so March should be included. The rates are 20 per cent of basic pension from 80, 30 per cent from 85, 40 per cent from 90, 50 per cent from 95 and 100 per cent from 100. Family pensioners get the same. Send the bank's CPPC a short letter with the PPO page showing his date of birth and ask for the March arrears.

Yes. Within the same bank, ask your present branch to transfer the pension account, and the CPPC moves the PPO record. To move to a different authorised bank, apply through the bank that pays you now, which sends the PPO to the new bank's CPPC. This can take a few weeks, so keep your old account open and do not close it until the first pension is credited at the new place. No fresh PPO is needed for either move.

Yes. A pensioner living outside a CGHS-covered area can opt for the fixed medical allowance, which is Rs 1,000 a month from 1 July 2017. It is shown in the PPO or added by the bank on your declaration. If you later move to a CGHS city, you can join CGHS instead, but you cannot draw both for the same period. Family pensioners in non-CGHS areas can claim it too.

The ordinary rate is 30 per cent of the employee's last basic pay, never below Rs 9,000, plus dearness relief. For an initial period the enhanced rate of 50 per cent of last pay applies. If he died in service, the enhanced rate runs for ten years from the date of death. If he died after retirement, it runs for seven years or until he would have turned 67, whichever comes first, and cannot exceed the pension he was drawing. Disputes on eligibility are covered under family pension claims. These rules are in Rule 50 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021.

In most cases, yes. Family pension is payable when the employee dies after one year of continuous service, and also before one year if he had been medically examined and found fit at appointment, which is the usual practice. Death gratuity is payable as well, at two times monthly emoluments for service under one year. Ask the office for both claim forms together, and ask in writing about compassionate appointment at the same time.

Usually not. When the spouse is named in the PPO as the family pensioner, the bank can start family pension on a simple application with the death certificate, a copy of the PPO and your account details. You may need to open or convert to an account in your own name. If the bank insists on a fresh PPO, ask it to put the reason in writing. A fresh authorisation is needed only when the eligible person is not named in the PPO.

Yes. Your pension from your own service and the family pension from his service are separate entitlements, and you can draw both, each with dearness relief. Each has its own PPO, and the bank may keep them in separate accounts. If an office tells you to give up one, ask for the rule in writing, because no rule requires a widow to choose between her own pension and her husband's family pension.

No. For a widow or widower, family pension does not depend on income or employment, so a government or private job does not stop it. That stays true if the job is a compassionate appointment in his own department. Income limits apply to others: children above 25, dependent parents, disabled siblings, and a childless widow who remarries. Keep drawing the family pension and keep the bank informed of any change in your address.

Yes, since an amendment in January 2024. Where divorce proceedings are pending, or she has filed a case against her husband under the domestic violence, dowry or criminal laws, a woman employee or pensioner can ask in writing that family pension after her death go to her eligible child first. The request is given to the Head of Office. The husband comes in only when no child remains eligible. If he is the guardian of a minor child, the payment is made to him only on the child's behalf.

Yes. A son or daughter whose disability prevents them from earning a living gets family pension for life, after the turn of any other eligible members, provided the disability existed during the parent's lifetime. Since he cannot manage the money, it is paid through a guardian, either the one named in the parent's papers or one appointed under law, such as a guardianship certificate from the local committee under the National Trust Act. Keep the disability certificate ready with the claim.

After retirement the proceedings continue under Rule 8 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021, and the only outcome possible is withholding or withdrawing pension, or recovering a proven loss from pension or gratuity. Dismissal or reduction in rank is no longer available. A pension cut needs a finding of grave misconduct or negligence and must leave at least the minimum pension of Rs 9,000. When Advocate B.K. Singh reads such an order, he looks first for that 'grave' finding and for the authority who signed it.

Dismissal forfeits pension, but Rule 41 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 lets the dismissing authority grant a compassionate allowance of up to two-thirds of the pension you would otherwise have got, if the case deserves special consideration. It is not automatic. If the penalty order is silent on it, apply asking for the allowance to be considered. Compulsory retirement as a penalty is different: the pension then lies between two-thirds and full under Rule 40. Challenging the penalty itself is covered under removal and dismissal.

No. The Supreme Court has treated pension as property protected by Article 300A, not a bounty (State of Jharkhand v. Jitendra Kumar Srivastava, 2013), so it can be withheld only under a rule such as Rule 8, after the procedure that rule lays down. A pending OA of your own is no ground to hold pension, gratuity or commutation. If any officer hints at this, ask for it in writing; such a letter usually helps your case more than theirs.

Arrears due to a pensioner on the date of death go to the person he nominated under the Payment of Arrears of Pension (Nomination) Rules, 1983, and if there is no nomination, to his legal heirs. Where the widow is the family pensioner, the bank or PAO usually pays her. With several heirs and no nomination, the office may ask for a legal heir certificate. Arrears the department wrongly held back do not lapse on death; the family can pursue them.

The standard undertaking in the pension papers, to refund any excess later found, is generally required, and refusing it only delays your dues. Read it first. Courts have allowed recovery where a clear undertaking was given (High Court of Punjab and Haryana v. Jagdev Singh, 2016). What you should not sign is a letter admitting a specific overpayment you dispute. Advocate B.K. Singh tells retirees to write 'subject to my objection dated ...' under any figure they do not accept, and to keep a copy.

Yes. Most of this work runs on documents: the PPO or the death certificate, Form 4 family details, the claim and the replies received so far. Copies can be sent by email or WhatsApp, and a case before CAT can be filed and argued without her coming to the bench. To have Advocate B.K. Singh review the file and suggest the next step, use the contact page or ask for an online consultation.