AP Government Clears Long-Pending Family Pension Issue for 11,000 CPS Employees

Andhra Pradesh has decided to sanction gratuity-linked family pension for employees under the Contributory Pension Scheme, resolving a grievance that had been pending since 2017 and affects roughly 11,000 state government staff.

By Newsroom

2 min read Published 25 June 2026 at 06:10 am IST

The Andhra Pradesh government has moved to settle a long-standing grievance among employees covered under the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS), deciding to sanction family pension calculated in line with employees' gratuity entitlement. The decision, tied to the implementation of Office Memorandum No. 57, closes out an issue that had remained unresolved since 2017 and is expected to benefit around 11,000 CPS employees across the state.

CPS, the state-level equivalent of the National Pension System, applies to government employees who joined service after the scheme replaced the older defined-benefit pension structure roughly two decades ago. Unlike the legacy pension scheme, where retirement and family benefits followed a fixed formula tied to last-drawn pay, CPS ties outcomes to market-linked contributions, which has repeatedly left gaps and ambiguity around exactly how much family pension or gratuity a deceased employee's dependents are entitled to. Clarifying that calculation has been a recurring demand from CPS employee associations not just in Andhra Pradesh but in several other states that adopted similar contributory schemes.

The Secretariat CPS Employees' Association welcomed the government's move, thanking Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Minister Nara Lokesh for acting on the issue. For the families of CPS employees, the clarity removes years of uncertainty over how survivor benefits would be computed in the event of an employee's death in service or shortly after retirement — a gap that has caused financial hardship for affected families in the interim.

The move comes in the same week the state cabinet, chaired by Naidu, also approved raising the retirement age for employees of public sector undertakings, corporations and similar bodies from 60 to 62, alongside the rollout of Memo-57 provisions more broadly. Taken together, the decisions point to a wider push by the state government to address pending employee welfare demands, several of which had been stuck in administrative limbo for years before the current term.