New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday approved the Organised Group A Service status to officers of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) that will ensure better service benefits for them, ending years of legal battle.
The Cabinet also approved extension of benefit of Non-Functional Financial Upgradation and Non-Functional Selection Grade.
The decision by the Union Cabinet regarding CAPFs will benefit about 11,000 serving officers and a few thousand more who have retired since 2006 from the five primary CAPFs or paramilitary forces - Central Reserve Police Force, Border Security Force, Central Industrial Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and Sashastra Seema Bal.
The cadre officers of these forces will now get better deputation chances as they will be eligible to get empanelled under the central staffing scheme, get enhanced facilities of transportation, house rent allowance, travelling and dearness allowance. Officers of forces such as the National Disaster Response Force and the National Security Guard (NSG) along with central police organisations like the Bureau of Police Research and Modernisation and the National Investigation Agency among others will also be benefitted as they draw their maximum manpower from these five CAPFs.
The decision, the government said in a statement, would “result in grant of NFFU to eligible Group A executive cadre officers of CAPF and will also allow them to avail the benefit of NFSG at an enhanced rate of 30% as per guidelines.”
The officers have filed several writ petitions since 2009 asking the government to allow them “level-playing field” with their IPS counterparts and seniors who join these forces on deputation. A senior CAPF officer, who led the litigation in the court seeking parity with other Group A services of the government and the IPS, said this is a “very happy moment for the men who wear the commanding ranks of the force and are born, brought up and retire from it.”
