Raising the Retirement age of Soldiers below the rank of officers in Defence Forces

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Defence Minister Shri Arun Jaitley submitted a report to a question in Lok Sabha on 18th July 2014 about the retirement age of soldiers below the rank of officers in Defence Forces. He said, there is presently no such proposal to increase the retirement age of soldiers below the rank of officers in the defence forces. And the details of the retirement age of various category of officers and soldiers in the defence forces (excluding Armed Forces Medical Services) at present, are as under:

 ARMY :

Officers		Other Ranks
General	62 years or3 years of tenure whichever is earlier	Sub Major	54 years or 34 years* of service or4 years of tenure whichever is earlier
Lt. Gen	60 years	Subedar	52 years or 30 years*of service
Maj. Gen	58 years	Naib Subedar	52 years or 28 years*of service
Brigadier	56 years	Havildar	49 years or 26 years*of service
Colonel	54 years	Naik	49 years or 24 years*of service
-	-	Sepoy Gp (X)	42 years or 19 years*of service
-	-	Sepoy Gp (Y)	48 years or 22 years*of service

* Service limit includes extension of 2 years by screening.

 Note 1: In all categories below officer ranks, age limit or service limit whichever occurs earlier is applicable for retirement. Note 2: Above information does not cover officers of certain specialised branches. 

Navy: 

Officers		Sailors
Admiral	62 years or3 years of tenure whichever is earlier	Master Chief Petty Officer (MCPO) I and II	57 years
Vice Admiral	60 years	Chief Petty Officer (CPO) and below	52 years
Rear Admiral	58 years	-	-
Commodore/ Captain (Education)	57 years	-	-
Commodore/ Captain	56 years	-	-
Commander	54 years	-	-
Lt. Commander and below	52 years	-	-

Air Force: Retirement age of Airmen is 57 years. Retirement age for officers is as given below:

(i) Permanent Commissioned Officers:

Air Chief Marshal	62 years or 3 years of tenure whichever is earlier
Air Marshal	60 years
Air Vice Marshal	58 years
Air Commodore	(i)   56 years for Flying Branch
	(ii)  57 years for other branches
Group Captain (Select)	(i)   54 years for Flying Branch
	(ii)  57 years for other branches
Wing Commander and Group Captain (Time Scale)	(i)   52 years for Flying Branch.
	(ii) 54 years for Ground Duty Branches other than education and meteorological branches.

(iii) 57 years for Education and Meteoro-logical branches.

(ii) Branch Commissioned Officers: 57 years. 

Various measures taken by the Government for the welfare of soldiers and officers include improvement in living and working conditions through provision of better infrastructure and facilities, additional family accommodation, facilities for movement of troops from border areas and liberalised leave policy, deployment of psychological counsellors for psychological counselling, provisions for medical and health care as per extant rules, provisions to address the educational needs of service personnel and their wards, Group Insurance Scheme, Canteen Stores Department (CSD) facilities, establishing a grievance redressal mechanism and Schemes / Programmes for pre and post retirement training, re-employment and self-employment of ex-servicemen etc.

(Source: CGEN.in)