Ex-servicemen reservation in government jobs — what the rules actually say

Every figure on this page comes from one document: the Department of Personnel and Training's Compendium of Guidelines on Reservation for Ex-Servicemen, OM No. DOPT-1766747426976, dated 25 December 2025. It gathers into one place the rules that were scattered across notifications since 1979.

The short answer

• 10% of vacancies in Group C posts
• 20% of vacancies in Group D posts
• 10% of vacancies in posts up to the level of Assistant Commandant in para-military forces
• The reservation is horizontal — see what that means below
• Ex-servicemen are "exempted from payment of any examination or application fee"
• Age: deduct your military service from your age; three years of slack on top

"Horizontal" — the word that confuses everyone

Reservation for SC, ST and OBC is vertical: separate buckets of posts. The ex-servicemen quota is horizontal, which means it cuts across those buckets. An SC ex-serviceman selected against an ex-servicemen vacancy is adjusted against the SC quota, not counted twice. You are not competing in a separate pool; you are being counted inside your own category.

The compendium spells out the practical effect: if a suitable SC or ST or OBC vacancy is not available to adjust such an ex-serviceman, "he shall be adjusted in future against the next available vacancy" reserved for that category.

Where reservation increases, the extra vacancies go first to disabled ex-servicemen, and only what is left over goes to others.

Who counts as an ex-serviceman

The definition is from the Ex-servicemen (Re-employment in Central Services and Posts) Rules, 1979. In plain words, you are covered if you served in any rank — combatant or non-combatant — in the regular Army, Navy or Air Force, and you were:

• retired, relieved or discharged after earning a pension; or
• relieved on medical grounds attributable to military service and given a medical or other disability pension; or
• released because the establishment was reduced; or
• released after completing your engagement — not at your own request, not by dismissal, and not for misconduct or inefficiency — and given a gratuity.

The rules also cover Territorial Army pension holders, certain Army Postal Service personnel, gallantry award winners, and ex-recruits boarded out on medical grounds with a disability pension.

Short Service Commissioned Officers SSCOs released after completing their initial terms of engagement — again, not by dismissal or discharge for misconduct or inefficiency — and given gratuity are eligible for ex-serviceman status. The compendium fixes the date: "All SSCOs who were released from service with gratuity will get the status of Ex-servicemen w.e.f. 13.02.2020 or thereafter."

Where these rules apply

All Central Civil Services and posts, and posts up to the level of Assistant Commandant in the para-military forces. The compendium names them: BSF, CRPF, ITBP, CISF, Secretariat Security Force, Assam Rifles and the Railway Protection Force.

Age relaxation — three different rules

Which one applies depends on the post and how it is filled:

1. Group B (Non-Gazetted), Group C and Group D. Deduct the period of your actual military service from your actual age. If what remains does not exceed the maximum age by more than three years, you are treated as within the age limit.
2. Group A and Group B (Gazetted), filled by direct recruitment but not through an open All-India competitive exam. The upper age limit is relaxed by the length of your military service plus three years.
3. Group A and B through an All-India competitive examination. Here the relief is smaller and conditional: ex-servicemen and Commissioned Officers including ECOs and SSCOs who have rendered at least five years of military service and were released on completion of assignment (or whose assignment is due to be completed within a year), or on account of disability attributable to military service or invalidment, get a maximum of five years relaxation in the upper age limit.

The education relaxations most people never hear about

• Group D reserved vacancies: an ex-serviceman with not less than three years' service is exempt from the minimum educational qualification.
• Group C: where the prescribed qualification is a middle-school pass (8th) or lower, the appointing authority may relax it for an ex-serviceman with at least three years' service.
• The fifteen-year rule: a matriculate ex-serviceman — which includes one holding the Indian Army Special Certificate of Education or its Navy or Air Force equivalent — with at least 15 years of service may be considered for posts where the essential qualification is graduation, so long as technical or professional work experience is not essential. This one is worth reading twice before you rule yourself out of a post.

The trap that costs people their quota

Use it once, and it is spent Once you have secured regular employment in a Central Government civil post, you keep the age relaxation for any higher post or service — but you are no longer eligible for the ex-servicemen reservation.

There is one saving clause, and it depends on paperwork you must do at the right moment. If you applied for other vacancies before joining a civil job, you can still claim ex-servicemen reservation for those applications. To keep that right, when you join the first civil job you must give the employer a self-declaration with the date-wise details of every application you had already made. An application submitted after joining a civil post "shall not be treated as an application under ex-serviceman quota".

Where the vacancies are announced

Reserved vacancies are to be notified to the Directorate General (Resettlement) and to the Rajya and Zila Sainik Boards, with advance notice "preferably of 3 months", and also advertised in the local newspaper so that ex-servicemen can apply directly to the recruiting agency.

This is the practical reason to keep your Zila Sainik Board registration current — it is one of the two places the vacancies land first.

Priority, and what happens to unfilled posts

• Ex-servicemen are divided into priority and non-priority categories in a 50:50 ratio, and the roster starts with a priority candidate. Ex-servicemen disabled in war or in peacetime, where the disability is attributable to military service, are in the priority group.
• If reserved vacancies in Group C and D go unfilled, they are carried forward for up to two further recruitment years and then lapse.
• In the para-military forces, an unfilled reserved vacancy is filled from the non-ex-servicemen category instead.
• Where not enough ex-servicemen qualify on the general standard, selection may be made "under a relaxed standard" — provided that does not affect the level of performance.

What to do with this

Two practical steps. Keep your discharge book, PPO and ESM identity papers together and current — every claim above runs on them. And write your service in words a civilian recruiter understands: our military-to-civilian skills guide and the free ATS resume builder are built for exactly that.