Central government employees to be included in new gratuity rules; check details

The central government’s new Central Civil Services (Payment of Gratuity under National Pension System) Rules, 2021 will also include central government servants, civilian government servants in the defense services, appointed substantiatively to civil services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union government on or after the 1st day of January 2004. According to a gazette notification, when a government servant retires, retired, discharged, or allowed to resign from service or dies, any claim to gratuity will be regulated by the provision of these rules.

Adding to that the day on which the government servant retires, retired, discharged, or allowed to resign from service or dies will be considered as the last working day and also the date of death.

Gratuity eligibility for retirement

As per the notification, retirement gratuity would be paid to a government servant who has completed five years of service and retires on attaining the age of superannuation, or on invalidation, or who retires or is retired in the advance of the age of superannuation.

It is also payable to those who on being declared surplus to the establishment in which he was serving, opts for Special Voluntary Retirement Scheme relating to voluntary retirement of surplus employees.

Further, it is payable to those who has been permitted to be absorbed in service or post in or under a corporation or company wholly or substantially owned or controlled by the central government or state government or in or under a body controlled or financed by the central government or a state government.

Calculation of gratuity payment

The retirement gratuity paid will be equal to one-fourth of the employees’s emoluments for each six monthly periods of qualifying service subject to a maximum of sixteen and a half times the emoluments.

Emoluments would mean the basic pay which a government servant was getting immediately before his retirement or on the date of his death. While the qualifying service of the government servant will start from the date he or she takes charge of the post to which he is substantively or in an officiating or temporary capacity.