New Delhi: While the Union government had launched the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) in April this year, so far only just over 1,00,000 or 4% of the 2.5 million central government staff have exercised the UPS option. A June 30 deadline was first set for the UPS adoption and it was later extended to September 30 and then to November 30.However, according to the breakdown of UPS enrolment available till October 14, 2025, 38,569 civil employees have opted for UPS, followed by railways (23,529), Post (18,303), defence (11,144) and telecom (349), reported Financial Express.According to the Financial Express report, the reason for the low adoption of UPS could be attributed to a lack of awareness and also to resistance from paramilitary and railway staff who constitute nearly two-thirds of the central government employees under National Pension Scheme (NPS).Under the UPS, an assured pension of 50% of 50% of the last drawn salary (average basic pay of the last 12 months of service) upon superannuation for all employees completing a minimum of 25 years of service. As per the scheme, the value of such deferred compensation is fully indexed to inflation.There are also assured payouts to the spouse of the pensioner after his/ her demise at 60% of the last pension drawn. The scheme also provides all employees with a minimum of 10 years of service a pension of Rs 10,000 per month.One of the reasons for the central armed police forces (CAPF) being less enthused to opt for UPS is the fact that while under NPS they can take the voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) after 20 years in service and yet get an immediate pension by investing 80% of their corpus in annuities, in the case of UPS, they can take VRS after 25 years of service and the pension will start only after they attain 60 years of age.