Earlier Service, Casual Service or Military Service Left Out of Your Qualifying Service

What a missing spell can cost you

Under the old pension scheme, qualifying service decides four things. Ten years is the line between a monthly pension and a one-time service gratuity. Twenty years opens the door to voluntary retirement under Rule 43 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021. Retirement gratuity is worked out on completed six-monthly periods of qualifying service, up to a ceiling. And for those under the Unified Pension Scheme, the assured payout is scaled to qualifying service between 10 and 25 years.

So a missing spell can be worth a few thousand rupees or a lifetime pension, depending on where it pushes you. A clerk with 27 years who loses two years of earlier service still gets the same monthly pension, but less gratuity. A laboratory attendant with 9 years and 4 months who loses a year of temporary status service drops from pension to gratuity altogether. Work out which group you are in before deciding how hard to fight.

One rounding rule matters at the edges. A fraction of a year of three months or more is treated as a completed half-year, so 9 years and 9 months is treated as 10 years for pension. If your count stands at 9 years and 8 months, a single month of correctly counted service changes the result.

Kinds of earlier service and how the rules treat them

Earlier government service you left to join this post

This is the most common gap we see. An employee who moves from one government post to another by applying through proper channel has to resign the first post to join the second, but that resignation is a formality. The rules treat it as a technical resignation, and past service is not forfeited. Trouble starts when the relieving order of the first office simply says 'resignation accepted' with no mention of proper channel, and the pension office of the second reads that as a plain resignation.

The fix is evidence that you applied through your then department and it forwarded your application, or issued a no objection certificate, before you were relieved. Look for the forwarding letter, the vigilance clearance for the new post, the relieving order and any service book entry. A gap of a few days between relief and joining is normally covered by joining time or condoned under Rules 27 and 28, and condoned gaps do not themselves count as service but they join the two spells.

The same logic applies, with more paperwork, to someone who came from a state government or from an autonomous body that had its own pension scheme. There, the earlier employer must also accept or transfer its share of the pension liability. A file can sit for years because one office has not answered the other. That is an administrative failure, not a reason to deny the count.

Casual labour and temporary status: the half that counts

Under the DoPT Casual Labourers (Grant of Temporary Status and Regularisation) Scheme of 10 September 1993, casual workers who met the scheme's conditions got temporary status, and once regularised, half of the service rendered under temporary status counts for retirement benefits. Service before temporary status does not count. Many offices regularised such staff years later and then calculated pension from the date of regular appointment alone, leaving out the half they should have added.

Proving this needs the temporary status order with its date. Muster rolls, wage registers and attendance sheets support it, but the order is what the pension office will ask for. If it is missing from your file, ask the office in writing for a copy and keep the reply; a refusal or a 'not traceable' reply is itself useful later. Our guide to casual labour records before absorption lists what else may help.

Where temporary status came before 1 January 2004 and regularisation came after it, a second question arises: whether you belong to the old pension scheme or the NPS. Tribunals and High Courts have answered that differently on different facts, so check the current position for your department before relying on any one ruling. The wider problem of long casual service is covered on our page on casual and contract workers in central offices.

Military service before your civil job

A soldier, sailor or airman who later took a civil post under the old pension scheme had a choice under the pension rules. He could keep drawing military pension, in which case military service does not count again for civil pension. Or he could stop the military pension and refund what the rule requires (the pension drawn, any commuted value and the gratuity, which may be paid in instalments), and then count the military service as part of civil qualifying service. Rule 20 of the 2021 Rules carries this forward.

Most ex-servicemen below officer rank keep their military pension, and for good reason: it is paid for life, and since the DoPT order of 1 May 2017 the whole of it is ignored when civil pay is fixed. Disputes come from the smaller group who did opt to count, refunded part of the amount, and then found at retirement that the option was never recorded or the refund schedule was never closed. The service book, the option form and the refund challans settle it.

Those who joined the armed forces after 31 December 2003 keep their military pension or gratuity and are placed in the NPS on re-employment, so this choice does not arise for them. Ex-servicemen disputes about quota and pay fixation are dealt with on our page on ex-servicemen in civil posts.

Ad hoc, officiating and contract spells

Qualifying service begins when you take charge of the post you were first appointed to, whether substantively or on officiating or temporary terms, so long as it is followed without interruption by regular appointment. Ad hoc service of a teacher, a nurse or a junior engineer who was later regularised in the same post without a break therefore counts. Offices go wrong when they start the count from the date of the regularisation order instead.

A break of even one day, created only to avoid continuity, should be looked at carefully. Where an office kept terminating and re-engaging ad hoc staff every six months for years, tribunals have looked at the substance and not the artificial gap. That argument needs care, though: it is stronger for a few days' break between long spells than for months-long gaps where the employee really was out of work. Ad hoc disputes about seniority and promotion are a separate matter, covered on our page on ad hoc service and regular promotion.

Contract service is narrower. Rule 18 lets it count where the contract employee is later appointed regularly without a break and deals with the government's provident fund contribution as the rule requires. Read the rule against your own contract, because the terms of engagement vary a great deal between offices and projects.

Periods inside your service that quietly drop out

Some deductions happen inside an otherwise continuous career, and pensioners often find them only when the pension papers arrive. Extraordinary leave counts only when taken on medical certificate or for the specific purposes the rules allow. A period of suspension counts in full if you were exonerated or given only a minor penalty; otherwise it counts only to the extent the competent authority orders. Unauthorised absence treated as dies non does not count.

Each of these needs an order, and the order should have been passed when the period ended. Where no order exists and the pension office has deducted the period on its own reading of the service book, ask for the order by which the deduction was made. An absence that was later regularised as leave of a kind that counts must be counted, and a suspension that ended in exoneration cannot be dropped. Our guide on service book mistakes about joining and leave shows how these entries go wrong.

The provisions that matter most

Getting a missing spell added

Start at least a year before retirement if you can. Pension papers are prepared from about a year before the date, and it is easier to correct a draft than a sanctioned pension.

1. Get the count the office is using

   Ask your Head of Office for the qualifying service statement in your draft pension papers, or the verification certificate if one was issued during service. Compare it line by line with your own record of posts and dates.

2. Mark each gap and find its paper

   For every spell left out, find the document that brings it in: forwarding letter, temporary status order, regularisation order, option form, refund challan, leave sanction or suspension order. One good document beats several weak ones.

3. Write to the office that holds the record

   If the missing service was in another office, ask that office for a certified extract of the service book and a certificate of service. Send the request by speed post or email so the date is on record.

4. Make one clear representation

   Send a single representation to your Head of Office, copied to the pension sanctioning authority, listing each spell, the rule under which it counts and the document attached. Ask for a speaking order. Our page on representations before going to the tribunal covers the waiting period.

5. Follow the file to the Pay and Accounts Office

   Even after the department agrees, the PAO checks the count. Ask the department to send a note explaining the rule under which each spell is added, so the PAO does not return the file.

6. Apply to CAT if refused

   A reasoned refusal, or silence for six months after the representation, allows an Original Application under Section 19 of the Administrative Tribunals Act. The relief asked for is usually a direction to count the spell and revise pension and gratuity with arrears.

Papers that decide these cases

How long it takes and what it costs

Where to file, and whom to make a party

A central government employee or pensioner files before the Central Administrative Tribunal. A serving employee files before the bench for the place of posting; a pensioner may file where he or she ordinarily lives. Railway staff, postal staff and civilians in defence establishments all come to CAT on this question.

Name every office whose action you need. If the missing service was in another central department, that department must be a respondent, because its service book is the evidence and it may need to certify or transfer something. If it was in a state government or an autonomous body, add that employer too. A tribunal order that binds only your last department can leave you stuck when the earlier employer refuses to cooperate.

CAPF personnel and staff of PSUs and banks generally go to the High Court, and state government staff go to their own State Administrative Tribunal or High Court. Where the earlier service was in a state and the present one central, CAT is still the forum for the central department's refusal to count it.

Joined after 2004? Why the count still matters

For employees who joined central service on or after 1 January 2004 and stayed in the NPS, qualifying service used to matter only for gratuity. That changed with the Unified Pension Scheme, notified in January 2025 and in force from 1 April 2025. UPS ties the assured payout to qualifying service: full at 25 years, proportionate between 10 and 25. An employee who chose UPS and is short of 25 years now has every reason to check that earlier spells are counted. Our page on Unified Pension Scheme option disputes deals with UPS questions more broadly.

Employees moved back to the old pension scheme under the DoPPW order of 3 March 2023, because they were appointed against vacancies advertised before 22 December 2003, are fully under the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 and the usual counting rules apply. If that move itself is in dispute, see our page on pre-2004 vacancy and old pension.

Mistakes that lose years

• Not reading the verification certificate. If your service was verified during your career and you signed off on a wrong count, it becomes harder to reopen. Read it when it is issued.
• Throwing away old relieving papers. The forwarding letter of 1998 is often the only proof of a technical resignation. Keep every appointment and relieving order.
• Asking for everything at once. A representation claiming every casual day since 1985 is easy to reject. Claim only what the rules support, and show the document for each spell.
• Leaving it until after retirement. Corrections after the PPO is issued need a revised authority and take longer. Begin when the pension papers are being prepared.
• Not naming the earlier employer in the case. An order against one office cannot make another office produce its records.

An old service question raised at retirement: is it too late?

Usually not. Pension is paid every month, and a pension fixed on a wrong count of service is a continuing wrong, so the claim for correct pension survives. What may be cut is how far back arrears go: the three-year limit from Tarsem Singh (2008) is often applied, though the Supreme Court's September 2026 judgment in Maya Banerjee departed from it in a family pension case, so check the current position. Our note on why old pension claims stay open explains the reasoning.

Gratuity is different, being paid once. If the department passed a clear order years ago refusing to count a spell and you did nothing, a claim for extra gratuity will face Section 21 of the Administrative Tribunals Act. Advocate B.K. Singh's first question in these files is the date of that earliest refusal, because it decides whether delay has to be explained before anything else.

Bringing your service history together

Write your service history on one page: each post, office, dates, and how you moved from one to the next. Mark the spells the department has counted and the ones it has not, and beside each missing spell write the document you have for it. In our experience that page settles more of these cases than any argument, because most refusals come from a pension clerk who never saw the earlier record.

If the department will not move, or the earlier employer will not reply, a tribunal application naming both is the usual next step. Advocate B.K. Singh and the firm can look at whether your spells meet the conditions in the rules before you commit to a case. For a review of your qualifying service papers or for updates on how the rules are being applied, contact Advocate B.K. Singh.