13 IRS Customs and Indirect Taxes Officers of 1999 Batch Granted Non-Functional Upgradation to HAG
Thirteen officers of the Indian Revenue Service (Customs and Indirect Taxes) from the 1999 batch have been granted Non-Functional Upgradation to the Higher Administrative Grade, the rank equivalent to Principal Commissioner of Customs and Indirect Taxes, in Level 15 of the Pay Matrix, with effect from March 31, 2026, according to an order from the Competent Authority governing the service's promotion and pay matters.
Non-Functional Upgradation is a mechanism used across the central civil services to grant officers a higher pay grade and rank-equivalent status when they have not been posted to a functional position at that level, typically because the number of available HAG-level posts is smaller than the number of officers eligible by seniority. It ensures that an officer's pay and status keep pace with their batch year even when an actual promotion post is not available, and is calculated against a benchmark drawn from the officer's counterpart batch in the IAS, which sets the pace at which other services are expected to reach each successive grade.
The officers granted the upgradation are Pankaj Dwivedi, Ashima Bansal, Pai Giridhar Gopalkrishan, Tiju T, Manish Mani Tiwari, Sachin Jain, Satyajit Mohanty, Reyaz Ahmad, Dhirendra Lal, Rahul Ramesh Nangare, AS Meenalochani, Sophia Martin and Mahfuzur Rahman, all belonging to the Customs and Indirect Taxes wing of the Indian Revenue Service. The 1999 batch has been serving as Commissioners in the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs for several years, reflecting the promotion bottleneck that has built up in the service, with officers reaching Commissioner rank later relative to their years of service than earlier batches did.
Before this upgradation, the batch's substantive postings had largely been as Commissioners of Customs and Indirect Taxes across the country's ports, airports and GST zones, roles that carry direct charge over revenue collection, anti-smuggling enforcement and dispute adjudication. The NFU grant changes their pay and rank status without necessarily moving any of them out of these functional Commissioner-level assignments, meaning day-to-day charge and posting location for most of the thirteen officers is expected to remain unchanged in the immediate term.
The upgradation is part of a broader pattern within CBIC, where officers from batches spanning roughly 1997 to 2008 currently hold Commissioner-rank postings, an unusually wide band that officers within the service attribute to slower cadre restructuring and post creation relative to the growth in eligible officer strength, leaving successive batches working through the same bottleneck. NFU grants of this kind have become a recurring feature for IRS batches working through that backlog, offering pay parity even where functional promotion posts remain scarce.
For the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, the upgradation formally elevates the pay-grade status of a batch that already carries substantial operational responsibility across the customs and GST administration, without immediately altering the organisation's Principal Commissioner-level staffing at the field level. Whether functional HAG postings open up for these officers will depend on cadre review outcomes still pending within the department, a process that has moved slowly in past years and typically requires sign-off from both the Department of Revenue and the Department of Personnel and Training.
The order takes effect from March 31, 2026, and applies uniformly to all thirteen officers named, placing them in Level 15 of the Pay Matrix with the rank status of Principal Commissioner of Customs and Indirect Taxes.
