Every other forum on this site can be approached directly. This one cannot. Section 20 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 says the Tribunal shall not ordinarily admit an application unless the applicant has availed of all the remedies available under the relevant service rules — which means your first case is fought inside your own office, on paper, against your own department. Government employees arrive here after a year of asking verbally, with a real grievance and nothing in writing, and are sent back to the beginning. The good news is in the same section: if your department does not pass a final order within six months of your representation, the remedy is treated as availed and the door opens. Which is why the single most useful thing on this page is not about the Tribunal at all — it is about the letter you should write this week.
Almost every service matter that goes badly went badly before anything was filed, and for the same reason: the employee asked verbally for a year, kept no paper, and then discovered that the paper was the case.
Section 20 keeps the door shut until you have used your departmental remedy — and opens it if your department stays silent for six months. Section 21 gives you ordinarily one year, and where it starts depends on which of three things happened. The Tribunal is not bound by the Code of Civil Procedure, so the service file decides the case rather than the argument. And after the Tribunal the road runs through a Division Bench of the High Court, not straight to the Supreme Court.
Service disputes of government employees used to go to the ordinary courts, along with everything else, and they sat in the same queues. Article 323A of the Constitution allowed Parliament to provide for the adjudication of such disputes by administrative tribunals, and the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 did so. The Central Administrative Tribunal was the result, and its Principal Bench sits in Delhi, with benches elsewhere.
Three consequences follow from it being a tribunal rather than a court, and each of them changes how you should approach it. It has its own gate — the departmental remedy in Section 20, which no civil court imposes. It has its own clock — Section 21, which is not the Limitation Act. And it has its own procedure — Section 22, under which the Code of Civil Procedure does not bind it and the principles of natural justice guide it.
What it is not is equally worth saying. It is not a labour court, and a dispute with a private employer does not come here at all — that is a different system, and our labour court page deals with it. It is not a place to complain about a colleague or a department in general. And it is not a forum that re-runs an administrative decision because the employee disagreed with it.
| Who | Position |
|---|---|
| Persons appointed to public services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union | Covered — Section 14 |
| Members of the All-India Services | Covered — Section 14 |
| Employees of a State, or of a local or other authority, brought in by notification | Covered where the Central Government has notified them under Section 14(2) |
| Members of the naval, military or air forces, or any other armed forces of the Union | Outside the Act — Section 2. The Armed Forces Tribunal is the forum |
| Officers and servants of the Supreme Court and of the High Courts | Outside the Act — Section 2 |
| Secretariat staff of Parliament or a State legislature | Outside the Act — Section 2 |
| Employees of a private company, or of a body that is not covered by a notification | Not a service matter at all — a different system entirely |
Settle this before you settle anything else. An application filed in the wrong forum is not usually fatal to the grievance, but it costs a year, and a year is often the difference between being in time and being out of it. If you are unsure which category your employer falls in, take your appointment letter to an advocate and ask that one question first.
The expression covers the terms and conditions of your service, which in practice is most of a career:
| Stage | The disputes that arise |
|---|---|
| Getting in | Recruitment, selection, eligibility, the result, appointment, compassionate appointment |
| Early years | Probation, confirmation, regularisation, the date of appointment |
| Moving up | Seniority, promotion, the DPC, benchmark and grading, reversion |
| Where you sit | Transfer, posting, deputation, repatriation |
| What you are paid | Pay fixation, allowances, increments, arrears, recovery of an overpayment |
| When things go wrong | Suspension, charge sheet, departmental inquiry, penalty, appeal and revision |
| Going out | Retirement, pension, gratuity, commutation, retiral dues withheld |
If your grievance is in that table, you are in the right building. If it is that a colleague is unpleasant, that the department is badly run, or that a policy is unwise, you are not — and an advocate who tells you so at the first meeting is worth more than one who files.
This is the provision that makes this forum different from every other one on this site, and the one that sends most first-time applicants home.
Section 20 provides that the Tribunal shall not ordinarily admit an application unless it is satisfied that the applicant had availed of all the remedies available to him under the relevant service rules. Whatever your rules provide — a representation to a named authority, a departmental appeal, a revision — has to have been used.
And then the part that rescues people from a department that never answers: a person shall be deemed to have availed of all the remedies where a final order has not been made by the appropriate authority within six months of the representation or appeal being made.
Since Section 20 makes this compulsory anyway, it is worth writing properly rather than as a formality, because a good one does three jobs at once: it may solve the problem, it starts the six-month clock, and it becomes the backbone of the application if one has to be filed.
| Put in | Leave out |
|---|---|
| Your name, designation, office, employee number and date of appointment | Anything about a colleague’s character |
| The order or action complained of, with its number and date | General remarks about how the department is run |
| The rule or office memorandum you say applies, with its number and date | Threats about going to court |
| What exactly you are asking to be done | Sarcasm, and anything written in temper |
| Copies of the documents you rely on, listed | Allegations you cannot support on paper |
| A request for a written and reasoned decision | Length. Two pages beats ten |
We draft this as a written representation to your advocate’s instructions where you want it done properly, but the honest position is that many employees can write it themselves from the table above, and should. The part that must not be got wrong is the delivery: hand it in against an acknowledgement, or send it by a method that produces proof, and keep that proof in the same folder as the order.
Limitation here is not the Limitation Act; it is Section 21, and it is ordinarily one year. What confuses people is not the length but the starting point, which depends on what happened.
| Your situation | The year ordinarily runs from |
|---|---|
| A final order was made against you and your rules provided no further remedy | The date of that final order |
| You made a representation or appeal and an order was passed on it | The date of the order on the representation or appeal |
| You made a representation or appeal and no final order came within six months | The expiry of that six-month period |
Two practical points follow. First, keep the envelope and note the date of receipt of every order, because that date is the one nobody can reconstruct later. Second, a repeated representation on the same grievance does not generally give you a fresh year — writing again in the third year to restart the clock is a tactic that does not work and that is visible to everybody who reads the file.
Section 21(3) allows the Tribunal to admit an application after the prescribed period where the applicant satisfies it that he had sufficient cause for not making it in time. It is a real discretion, exercised on the explanation given.
Section 19 provides for the application to the Tribunal. In practice what matters to you is the shape of the file: a properly drafted original application setting out who you are, the order complained of, the rule relied on, the representation made and what happened to it, the grounds, and the relief asked for — with the documents annexed in order and paged, and an affidavit verifying it.
We prepare the application and its annexures to your advocate’s instructions, the affidavit and its attestation, and the paper book assembled in the order the registry expects. Two things are worth doing yourself before any of that: number your documents in date order, and write a single page listing what each one is. That page saves more time than anything else you can hand an advocate.
It is written into the Act: an applicant may appear in person or take the assistance of a legal practitioner. Very few forums say that as plainly, and it means the honest answer to “do I need a lawyer here” is no, not as a matter of law — which is a strange thing for a page like this to say, so here is the useful version.
| You can reasonably consider doing it yourself when | Get an advocate when |
|---|---|
| The point is a single clear rule and your documents prove it | Your matter is disciplinary — a charge sheet, an inquiry, a penalty |
| It is a release of something admittedly due, delayed administratively | Limitation is in issue, or you are applying to condone delay |
| You are well within time and the department has not disputed the facts | Seniority or promotion, where others have to be heard and the rules interact |
| You can write clearly, keep dates and attend every hearing | You need interim relief, and you need it before the order takes effect |
| — | The department has raised a legal objection to maintainability |
And the part that applies either way: the free legal services system exists for this too. If the reason you are thinking of appearing in person is that you cannot pay, ask at the legal services desk before deciding, rather than after the first hearing.
The Tribunal is not bound by the procedure laid down in the Code of Civil Procedure. It is guided by the principles of natural justice, subject to the Act and to the rules made under it, and it has power to regulate its own procedure. At the same time it has, for specified purposes, the powers of a civil court — summoning and enforcing attendance, requiring the discovery and production of documents, receiving evidence on affidavits, and the rest.
What that combination produces in practice is a forum that runs on documents and affidavits far more than on oral evidence. Which is why the advice on this page keeps returning to the same thing: the order, the rule, the representation, the proof of delivery, the service book. An applicant with a thin file and a strong feeling is in a much weaker position here than in a place where witnesses are examined at length.
More applications are made about transfer than about anything else, and it is worth being told the position honestly before you spend on one.
Transfer is ordinarily an incident of service. A tribunal does not sit in appeal over an administrative judgment about where an employee should work, and “this posting is inconvenient for my family” — however true — is not by itself a ground. What can be argued is something beyond the decision itself.
| Ground that can be argued | What you need to show it |
|---|---|
| The transfer policy or the rule was not followed | The policy or office memorandum, with number and date, and the facts that breach it |
| A specific protection applies to you | The instruction or scheme that gives it, and proof you fall within it |
| The order is mala fide — made for a reason other than the service | Material, not suspicion. This is pleaded specifically or not at all |
| The authority that passed it was not competent | The rule showing who may transfer you, and the order showing who did |
| It is punitive in substance, dressed as a transfer | The surrounding facts — the complaint, the inquiry, the timing |
And the practical half: speed decides these. An order challenged before it is given effect to is a different matter from one challenged after you have joined at the new place, and interim relief is usually the whole point of the exercise. If a transfer order has come and you intend to contest it, that is a same-week conversation, not a next-month one.
These are the matters where the rules interact most and where the file is most technical. The recurring disputes are the seniority position itself, the year in which a departmental promotion committee met, the benchmark applied, the effect of an adverse entry, the treatment of a sealed cover, and reversion.
Three things to know before starting. Others are affected — if you are asking to be placed above named colleagues, they may have to be heard, which changes the shape and the length of the matter. The seniority list is a document with a date, and objections to it usually have their own timeline in your rules, so a list accepted without objection for years is harder to unsettle. And an adverse entry has its own remedy — representation against the entry, within the time the rules allow — which is a separate exercise from challenging the promotion that it later affected.
Suspension is not a punishment; it is a holding step while something is examined. That distinction is not academic, because it controls what you can usefully ask for.
Where the department will not supply the inquiry report, the documents relied on or the rule it says it applied, an RTI application is usually the quickest way to place that refusal on the record — and the burden of justifying it then falls on the officer, not on you. The RTI and Information Commission page explains the appeal route and its deadlines.
This is where a service career is most often decided, and where the Tribunal’s examination is most useful — because it is an examination of process.
| Stage | What is looked at afterwards |
|---|---|
| The charge | Whether it was specific enough to be answered, and communicated properly |
| The documents | Whether the documents and the list of witnesses relied on were supplied to you |
| The inquiry | Whether you had a real opportunity to defend, to inspect documents and to cross-examine |
| The report | Whether the inquiry report was furnished to you before the penalty was decided |
| The authority | Whether the officer who imposed the penalty was competent to do so under the rules |
| The penalty | Whether it is so disproportionate to the misconduct that it cannot stand |
| The appeal | Whether the appellate authority applied its mind, or simply confirmed |
Two things follow for anybody in the middle of one. Reply to the charge sheet properly and in time, because that reply is read for the rest of the matter — we prepare the reply to your advocate’s instructions, and it is worth having it settled by somebody rather than written at midnight. And ask in writing for every document you are entitled to, keeping the copy; where the department does not supply them, an RTI application frequently settles the position, and the refusal itself becomes part of the record.
Two opposite problems arrive under the same heading. One is money not paid — a pay fixation not done, an increment not released, arrears withheld. The other is money the department now wants back, having paid you at a higher rate for years by its own mistake.
For the first, the route is dull and effective: identify the order or office memorandum that entitles you, set out the arithmetic, and represent in writing. A very large proportion of these are resolved without any application, because nobody had ever put the entitlement on paper with the rule beside it.
For the second, get advice before you consent to anything. Recovery of an excess payment is an area with a developed body of law about when it may and may not be effected, and it turns on matters such as the category of employee, whether the employee made a misrepresentation, how long ago it was and whether the person has retired. Do not sign a consent to recovery because a letter asks you to; ask first.
Retirement produces a particular kind of dispute: not a contested one, usually, but a stuck one. The file is incomplete, an entry in the service book was never corrected, a no-dues certificate is missing, a case is “pending”, and months pass.
When a government servant dies in service, the family is often told about compassionate appointment in the same week and then told nothing further for a year. Two things are worth knowing at the start.
It is governed by the scheme that applies to that department, which sets out who is eligible, in what circumstances, within what time, and against what assessment of the family’s situation. It is not an inheritance of the post and it is not automatic. The single most useful step a family can take is to obtain a copy of that scheme, read the eligibility and the time limit, and apply within it — because the commonest reason these fail is not merit, it is delay.
And the paperwork that everything else waits on is the family’s own: the death certificate, proof of relationship, and the records that establish who the dependants are. Those take time to obtain, so start them alongside the application rather than after it.
These succeed on a defect in the process and fail on disappointment with the outcome. Grounds that are genuinely arguable: the advertised rules or criteria were departed from; the criteria were changed after the process began; an ineligible candidate was selected; a reservation or category position was misapplied; the result was published contrary to the rules.
What does not carry: a belief that the selected candidate was less deserving, an objection to the difficulty of a paper, or a complaint made long after the result. And these matters have a particular urgency, because once appointments are made and people have joined, a court is far less willing to unsettle them — which makes the date of the result one of the most important dates in the file.
Ask most people where an appeal from this Tribunal goes and they will say the Supreme Court. That has been wrong since 1997.
In L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India, decided on 18 March 1997 by a seven-judge Bench, the Supreme Court held that Section 28 of the Act — which had excluded the jurisdiction of the High Courts — was unconstitutional; that the power of judicial review vested in the High Courts under Articles 226 and 227 is part of the basic structure and cannot be taken away; and that decisions of these Tribunals are therefore subject to scrutiny before a Division Bench of the High Court within whose jurisdiction the Tribunal falls. The Court also held that a litigant cannot approach the Supreme Court directly from such a Tribunal.
Your department (representation or appeal, under Section 20) → the Tribunal (the court of first instance for these matters) → a Division Bench of the High Court under Articles 226 and 227 → and only thereafter, in the ordinary course, the Supreme Court. Our Delhi High Court page explains what that stage is like and how it differs from everything below it.
The same judgment also explains why you should not try to skip the Tribunal and go straight to the High Court: these Tribunals were held to be the courts of first instance for the areas of law for which they were created, and a litigant is ordinarily expected to come here first.
This is a common and infuriating stage, and the answer is not a fresh case.
Section 17 gives the Tribunal the same jurisdiction, powers and authority in respect of contempt of itself as a High Court has. But before reaching for it, do the ordinary thing, because it works more often than people expect: send a written representation enclosing a certified copy of the order, stating precisely what is to be done and by when, addressed to the authority who has to do it, delivered against an acknowledgement.
If nothing follows, that letter is what the contempt application is built on. We prepare the certified copies and the application papers to your advocate’s instructions; whether to move for contempt, and when, is their call and not ours — it is a step that changes the temperature of a file and is not taken casually.
| If you are | Where the matter goes |
|---|---|
| A member of the armed forces | The Armed Forces Tribunal — the 1985 Act does not apply to you |
| An employee of a private company | Not a service matter. Our labour court page and employment agreement page cover that system |
| A State Government employee, where no notification covers you | Your State’s tribunal or the High Court — establish this before filing anywhere |
| An employee of the Supreme Court, a High Court, or a legislature secretariat | Expressly outside the Act — Section 2 |
| Complaining about harassment at work rather than a service condition | There may be an internal committee route as well — our workplace page sets out what an employer must have |
| Owed money by the Government under a contract, not as an employee | A civil or commercial matter — our money recovery page explains which procedure the document you hold opens |
If there is one habit that separates a service matter that goes well from one that does not, it is this. General fairness is a weak argument here. The rule, quoted by number, with the office memorandum that explains it, is a strong one.
Two honest things, and neither helps us sell anything.
This Tribunal is effective where a rule was broken — a procedure skipped, an entitlement withheld, a penalty imposed without the process the rules require, an authority acting beyond its competence. That is precisely what it was created for and it does it. It is much weaker where the real complaint is that a lawful administrative decision was unwelcome. Ask your advocate, in one sentence, which of those two your case is. If the answer is the second, an application is usually not the best use of your money or your next two years.
The second thing is about the atmosphere rather than the law. Litigating against your own employer while continuing to work for them is difficult, and people underestimate that. It is a reason to take the departmental route seriously rather than as a formality — a grievance settled on a file, without an application, is a better outcome for an employee who has years of service left, and it is available far more often than the anger of the moment suggests.
The order or action complained of, with the date you received it. Your appointment letter, confirmation order, and the service book entries. The seniority list relied on. The rules and office memoranda that apply, with numbers and dates. Every representation you have made, with proof of delivery and any reply. In a disciplinary matter, the charge sheet, the list of documents and witnesses, your reply, the inquiry report and the penalty order. In a pension matter, the sanction papers and the correspondence. Identity and address proof. And a one-page list of dates, in order, which is the document your advocate will be most grateful for.
Some of those papers must be sworn, so put the oath commissioner into your timetable at the beginning; the affidavit verifying the application is the one item that is thought of last and demanded first. Ask for a certified copy of every order while it is fresh instead of collecting them together much later, and send anything not in English or Hindi for translation before it reaches the paper book.
Documents, and nothing beyond them. Nobody here is an advocate, nobody appears before the Tribunal, nobody speaks to your department on your behalf, and nobody here can tell you what the Tribunal will do. What we do is the departmental representation drafted properly, the original application and its annexures typed to your advocate’s instructions, the reply to a charge sheet or a departmental notice, the petition where the matter moves to the High Court, the affidavits and their attestation, the RTI application where the department is withholding papers, the paper book assembled and paged, certified copies, translations, and the appeal papers later on.
Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it. The directory is free to open and free to write through, it runs A to Z, and no listing on it was bought.
Raise it at the outset, not after three hearings have gone by. Under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 the State bears the cost of representation for people who come within its categories and below its income limit, and the desk at the court complex is where that is decided. Because the authority revises that limit, printing it here would mislead somebody within a year — put the question there and take the answer that is current.
And this is the one forum where a second answer genuinely applies: Section 23 lets you appear in person. Where the matter is a clean documentary point and you are well within time, that is a real option rather than a consolation. Where it is disciplinary, or limitation is in issue, it is not — and in that situation legal aid is the right question to ask, not self-representation.
Every document carries its own price on its own page, visible to you before you order anything and before any conversation takes place. Whatever has to be paid to a tribunal or to a government office is listed on its own, separately from ours, because that money never becomes ours.
You hear the whole figure before work begins and nothing is taken in advance. And on this page the useful thing is the sequence rather than the price: find the rule, write the representation, keep the acknowledgement, and mark six months on the calendar. Those four cost nothing, they are required before you can come to the Tribunal at all, and they settle a fair number of matters without anybody filing anything. Tell us the date of the order and the date of your representation on the call — those two decide everything that follows.
Listed alphabetically. We do not rank, rate or feature advocates, and nobody pays for a position here — the reason is on our Find an Advocate page. Neither reading a profile nor writing to somebody through it costs anything.
Those two dates decide everything here — whether the gate in Section 20 is open, whether the six months have run, and whether you are inside the one year in Section 21. Send the order and whatever you have already written to your department. We will tell you what a complete file looks like and what is missing from yours, and put the directory in front of you. We will not tell you that an order can be arranged through anybody, because it cannot be, and anybody saying otherwise is taking money from a government servant who has a career to protect. Searching the directory is free and no commission from anybody on it reaches us.
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