Government employees recruited after January 2004 would also be entitled to receive gratuity on retirement or death while in service, the Modi government decided on Friday. The Centre and many state governments switched to the new pension scheme from January 1, 2004, that required employees to contribute 10% of their monthly salary towards their pension with a matching contribution from the government. Some states, except West Bengal and Tripura, joined later. More than 300,000 central government employees recruited after 2004 are covered by the NPS. The Seventh Pay Commission had lamented that many of them might not have enough money in their pension fund at retirement due to the government’s inability to firm up the rules of the game on time. Employees covered by the National Pension Scheme (NPS) were not entitled to any additional benefits other than the government’s contribution to their pension fund. But it had been argued that this was unfair since the NPS only replaced t