Disability compensation extended to all central govt employees

“Disability compensation” has been extended to all serving central government employees who get disabled in the line of duty and are retained in service in spite of such disablement, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday. He said an order has been issued on Friday that will particularly provide a huge relief to young central armed police force (CAPF) personnel of CRPF, BSF, CISF, etc since disability in the performance of duties is generally reported in their case due to constraints of job requirement as well as hostile or difficult work environment.

“Pertinent to mention that this new order will remove an anomaly in service rules, considering the hardship faced by the employees,” said Singh, the minister of state for personnel. A 2009 order of the government did not provide such compensation to those government servants who were appointed on or after January 1, 2004, and covered under National Pension System (NPS), according to a statement issued by the Personnel Ministry.

“However, with the new order issued by the Department of Pensions in the Ministry of Personnel, the employees covered under NPS will also get benefits under Rule (9) of Extra-Ordinary Pension (EOP),” it said. In other words, if a government servant gets disabled while performing his duties and this disablement is attributed to government service, in that case, if he is still retained in the service in spite of disablement, a lump sum compensation will be paid to him by arriving at the capitalized value of the disability element, with reference to the commutation table in force from time to time, the statement said. Singh said the Modi government is making all efforts to simplify rules and to do away with discriminatory clauses.

The ultimate objective of all these new initiatives is to provide ease of living for government servants even after they have superannuated and become pensioners or family pensioners or elder citizens, he was quoted as having said in the statement. In another employee-friendly decision, the Ministry of Personnel recently did away with was the minimum qualifying service of 10 years for pension, if a government servant is incapacitated due to bodily or medical infirmity and retired from government service, it said.

Accordingly, Rule 38 of CCS (Pension) Rules was amended to provide an invalid pension at 50 percent of the last pay, even if the employee had not completed a minimum qualifying service of 10 years, the statement said. In addition to the above, in yet another reform in the Pension Rules, a decision was also taken to amend the rule and provide a pension at an enhanced rate to the family of an employee who died during service before completing the requisite service of a minimum of seven years, it said.

“As a result, now the family pension of 50 percent of the last payment is also admissible to the family of employees who die even before completing seven years of service,” the statement added.