Andhra Pradesh Gives One-Time Option for Employees To Shift From CPS to OPS

 Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government has announced a one-time option for coverage under the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) to eligible employees –with a set of conditions.

This will be applicable to employees whose recruitment notification/advertisement was issued prior to 01-09-2004 and who were appointed on or after 01-09-2004 and are presently covered under the Contributory Pension Scheme in the state.

Finance principal secretary Peeyush Kumar issued GO Ms 158 here on Monday to this effect.

The GO stated that the government introduced a contributory pension scheme with effect from 01-09-2004, making it applicable to all state government employees appointed on or after 01-09-2004 in line with government of India’s ‘National Pension System’, which is applicable to all central government employees from 01-01-2004.

Subsequently, the central government through the department of pension and pensioner’s welfare, issued an office memoranda dated 17-02-2020 and 03-03-2023, extending a one-time option to central government employees whose recruitment process had commenced prior to the introduction of NPS but (whose) appointments were made thereafter.

Accordingly, the AP government issued orders adopting the policy of the central government and extended a one-time option to eligible state government employees duly stating that operational guidelines for implementation of the procedure will be issued later.

Subsequently, detailed operational guidelines have been issued to ensure uniform, transparent and time-bound implementation of a one-time option throughout the state.

Eligible employees, serving or retired and family pension beneficiaries, shall exercise their options as per the guidelines on or before 31-12-2026.

The operational guidelines under GO Ms 53 of the finance department dated 13-07-2026 mention eligibility and exercise of option wherein all applications for consideration of conversion from CPS to OPS shall be processed through the NIDHI portal. The serving employees shall use their current NIDHI credentials to submit their applications.

All applicants shall approach the appointing authority of the department in which he/she was initially appointed to obtain certified copies of the documents like recruitment notification/advertisement pertaining to his/her initial appointment, selection list, orders of appointment and orders admitting the individual to duty from the Initial Appointing Authority.

The other guidelines include: processing of applications by DDO, issue of final orders, responsibilities of stakeholders including Initial Appointing Authority, DDO and head office, admission to GPF and service records, regulation of pensionary benefits, treatment of CPS corpus, transfer of CPS. Corpus-in-service employees, transfer of CPS corpus-retired employees, cases of death or invalidation and online application and dashboard.