New Delhi: The Delhi high court has said that benefits of the Old Pension Scheme will be applicable for all CAPF personnel, LiveLaw has reported.

A division bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Neena Bansal Krishna, hearing 82 petitions against the lack of OPS benefit for CAPF personnel, asked the Union government to issue necessary orders within eight weeks.

The petitioners had also sought quashing of an Office Memorandum of February 17, 2020 to the extent it does not grant benefit of old pension scheme to the personnel who have been appointed pursuant to notifications/advertisements dated January 1, 2004, Hindustan Times has additionally reported.

The judgment came on Wednesday, January 11.

Central Armed Police Forces or CAPF include the Central Reserve Police Force, Border Security Force, Sashtra Seema Bal, Central Industrial Security Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police.

Earlier, employees of the CAPF were outside the ambit of this pension scheme.

The court noted that the December 22, 2003 notification for a New Contributory Pension Scheme (NPS) said that "the system would be mandatory for all new recruits to the central Government service from 1st of January 2004 (except the armed forces in the first stage)."

The court thus held that this meant that the NPS was not applicable to the Armed Forces and that the Armed Forces were to be covered by the Old Pension Scheme that was already in place.

The court also cited the Supreme Court's decision in Akhilesh Prasad Vs. Union Territory of Mizoram to observe that it is clear that the CAPF is part of the armed forces.

"Also, the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, vide Circular dated 6th August, 2004 clarified that the Central Forces under the administrative control of the Ministry of Home Affairs have been declared as Armed Forces of the Union,\" said the court.

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