Class-1 officers will now be called Group-1 officers

Govt has directed various departments to drop the use of class

The Centre has decided to replace the 'class' categorisation for specifying the seniority of its employees with new alphabetical groupings.

The posts under central government will be denoted as groups A, B, C and D instead of as classes I, II, III and IV in the service rules, the Department of Personnel and Training said in an order issued to all ministries and offices.

The Class-I classification is for gazetted officers while Class-II refers to mainly the non-gazetted officers, though there are some gazetted officers in this category too.

Class-III comprises clerical staff and Class-IV includes peons and helps or multi-tasking staff in the government hierarchy.

Class-III (Group C) employees have often expressed concern that they are taunted as 'third-class' employees due to the categorisation, official sources said.

DoPT, in its order issued on Monday, cited its 30-year-old order to say that the old nomenclature of Class-I, II, III and IV may be read as Group A, B, C and D in the service rules.

"The rules already existed for group categorisation. The DoPT has asked all ministries to reflect it properly and not to use old nomenclature of classes," a senior DoPT official said.

There are about 30.84 lakh central government employees, according to DoPT data.