Not Covered by the Tribunal: CAPF, PSU and Bank Staff Go Directly to the High Court

Your case starts in the High Court, not before the tribunal

The Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 was written for civil servants of the Union. It does not reach every person who draws a salary connected with the Government of India. Section 2 shuts out the uniformed forces. PSUs and banks stay out for a different reason: they are separate legal bodies, not ministries, and the Centre has not named them in a Section 14(2) notification. So a service dispute in any of these organisations ends up in one place: a High Court exercising writ jurisdiction.

This is not a disadvantage in itself. A High Court has wider powers than the tribunal and can issue any writ, direction or order it thinks fit. What changes is the procedure. There is no Original Application form, no Rs 50 tribunal fee, and no one-year limitation clause written into a statute. You file a writ petition drafted in the High Court's own format, you pay that court's fee, and the court decides whether your delay and your choice of forum are acceptable.

Two other groups often get confused with you. Soldiers, sailors and airmen have the Armed Forces Tribunal, set up by the AFT Act of 2007. Civilians who work in defence units, such as MES clerks or depot storemen, are ordinary civil servants and do go to the CAT. If you are in either group, this page is not your route; see our page on which forum the forces and CAPFs use for the wider picture.

Who goes where: a forum table for forces, PSU and bank staff

The provisions that decide your forum

Why the forces fall between the CAT and the AFT

When Parliament set up the Armed Forces Tribunal in 2007, it gave that tribunal the Army, the Navy and the Air Force and nothing more. The five big paramilitary forces had been outside the CAT from the start, since each one's founding statute names it an armed force of the Union. The result is a gap: two specialist tribunals, and neither one open to roughly ten lakh CAPF personnel. Courts have consistently filled that gap with Article 226.

Inside a force, the paperwork follows that force's own Act and Rules. A BSF man may be tried by a Security Force Court and then petition against the finding under the BSF Act. A CRPF constable is dealt with under the CRPF Act and the CRPF Rules, 1955, often by a departmental enquiry for major punishments. CISF disciplinary matters run under the CISF Rules, 2001. ITBP and SSB have Force Courts much like the BSF. Each set of rules has its own appeal or revision and its own time limit, and the High Court will first ask whether you used it. Our guide on the CAPF appeal and revision stage before a writ walks through those steps.

A few people inside these forces are not enrolled members at all: for instance some civilian staff hired against civil posts in a directorate. Whether such a person falls under the CAT depends on how the post is classified, and the answer is in the recruitment rules and the appointment letter, not in the name of the force.

PSU and bank staff: State under Article 12, but outside the tribunal

An engineer at a Navratna company in Noida, a deputy manager at a public sector insurer in Kolkata and a cashier at a nationalised bank branch in Indore all work for bodies that the courts treat as State. That is why they can file a writ at all. A private employer's staff cannot. But being State is a different question from being under the CAT, and the answer to the second is almost always no.

Section 14(2) notifications have mostly covered research councils, autonomous societies and some statutory bodies. Government companies registered under the Companies Act and the public sector banks have not, as a rule, been brought in. A handful of corporations have been notified over the decades, so check the current list before you assume. Our guide to checking a Section 14(2) notification explains where to look, and the guide on government servants and autonomous body staff explains why the label matters for pay, pension and penalties too.

The rules you are judged by also differ. PSU officers are usually governed by Conduct, Discipline and Appeal Rules modelled on the Department of Public Enterprises pattern and adopted by the company board. In the nationalised banks, officers answer to the discipline and appeal regulations framed for officer employees in 1976. Award staff in banks are governed by the bipartite settlements, including the settlement that lays down disciplinary procedure for workmen. SBI has its own service rules for officers. These rules decide what procedure you were owed and whom you appeal to.

Use the internal appeal first, unless one of the exceptions applies

A High Court will usually decline to hear a writ if you skipped a statutory appeal or revision that was open to you. This is a rule of practice, not an absolute bar. The Whirlpool judgment of 1998 lists four situations in which a court may hear you anyway: your fundamental right is at stake, you were never heard, the officer had no power at all, or you are attacking the rule itself. In service cases the first two come up most.

In practice, file the appeal within the time your rules allow. For a bank officer under the 1976 Regulations that is generally 45 days. For CAPF personnel the period depends on the force and the punishment, so read your rules. A late appeal gets rejected as time-barred, and then the High Court may say you lost the remedy through your own fault.

When an appeal lies untouched for months, the quickest help is often a short petition asking the court to have it decided by a date. It does not decide your case. It forces a reasoned order, which you can then challenge on its merits.

Disputes that commonly bring these employees to the High Court

• Dismissal after a Force Court or a departmental enquiry. Constables and head constables dismissed for absence, for a weapon or ammunition lapse, or for a fight in the barrack form a large share of CAPF writs.
• Declared a deserter. A jawan who overstayed leave because of a family illness and was declared a deserter often has a strong argument if the force ignored the medical papers he sent.
• Medical category and boarding out. Downgrading to a low medical category, invalidation, and the disability element of pension are frequent grounds in all five forces.
• Promotion courses and cadre seniority. Missing a promotion cadre course for no fault of your own, or being placed below batchmates after a deputation.
• PSU termination and VRS disputes. Termination of a management trainee during probation, a VRS that was withdrawn or refused, or a penalty under the company's CDA Rules without a proper enquiry.
• Pay revision and perks in PSUs. Arrears of a pay revision, withdrawal of a perk under DPE guidelines, or recovery of an allowance paid for years.
• Bank penalties for loan irregularities. Officers held responsible for advances that turned bad, often years after the loan, and dismissed or compulsorily retired.
• Bank pension and option disputes. Claims under the Bank Employees' Pension Regulations, 1995, including refusal of pension after compulsory retirement or dismissal.

How a service writ is prepared and filed

The order of work below is what we follow for a CAPF, PSU or bank writ. Your High Court may have small differences in format.

1. Pin down the final order

   Identify the last order passed on your grievance, whether it is the appellate order, a revision order or a letter rejecting your representation. The writ challenges that order and, where needed, the original one beneath it. Note its date, because delay is counted from it.

2. Gather the record

   Collect the charge memo, enquiry report, Force Court proceedings if any, your replies, the penalty order, the appeal and the appellate order. Where pages are missing, use the RTI Act or write to the authority, and hold on to the postal receipt.

3. Decide the court

   The candidates are usually the court for your place of posting, the court for the place the order was signed and, in CAPF cases, Delhi. The facts of where the cause of action arose decide this, as explained further down this page.

4. Draft the petition

   A good petition opens with a short chronology, then states facts, then the legal grounds, and ends with the precise orders you want, for example setting aside the penalty and restoring you with consequential benefits. Your sworn affidavit and the paginated annexures go behind it.

5. File and remove objections

   Most High Courts accept e-filing. Before listing, the registry goes through the file and flags defects (a blurred page, a missing attestation), and you must fix them.

6. First hearing and notice

   On the first date the bench may issue notice, throw the petition out in limine, or dispose of it with a short direction. Any request for a stay is pressed on this date.

7. Counter, rejoinder and final hearing

   The department or the bank files a counter affidavit; you reply in a rejoinder. The matter then waits on the board for final arguments, which in a busy High Court can take a long while.

Name the right respondents. In a CAPF case that normally means the Union of India (through the Home Secretary), the force's Director General, and each officer whose order you attack. For a PSU or bank, implead the company or bank and the officers who signed the impugned orders. A petition against the wrong party wastes the first hearing.

Which High Court: the cause of action and the headquarters question

Start with the facts. For a CRPF constable posted in Chhattisgarh and dismissed by a commandant there, Chhattisgarh is plainly one such place. If the appeal was decided by the DIG at a range in Odisha and the revision by the IG in Kolkata, those courts may also have a claim. A lot of CAPF men lean towards Delhi, since every force's directorate and the Home Ministry are located there.

The Delhi High Court does hear many paramilitary writs, and its roster has for years sent them to a Division Bench (check the current roster). Yet the same court, applying the Kusum Ingots principle of 2004, has turned away cases where the only link with Delhi was that the headquarters sits there. If the dismissal, the enquiry and the appeal all happened in one state, the court of that state is the safer choice. For writs in Delhi, our sister site on Delhi High Court practice covers that court's procedure in more detail.

For PSU and bank staff the same logic applies. The registered office of a bank in Mumbai does not by itself make the Bombay High Court the right court for a clerk dismissed in Lucknow. The court where the branch, the zonal office and the appellate authority sit is usually more natural, and judges notice forum shopping.

Time and cost at each stage

Delay: no fixed limitation, but the years still count

There is no section that says a writ must be filed within one year. What the court applies instead is its own discretion to refuse stale claims, known as delay and laches. Judges often treat three years as the outer edge for an ordinary service grievance, though a short delay with no explanation can still be fatal, and a long one with a good explanation can be excused.

Sending fresh representations does not restart the clock. A man dismissed in 2019 who wrote to the Director General every year until 2025 is still treated as having slept on his rights since 2019, unless one of those letters was actually considered and decided on its merits. If that happened, the reasoned rejection can sometimes be challenged as a fresh decision.

Pay and pension are different because the wrong recurs every month. For pay, judges still tend to allow only the three years of arrears preceding the petition. For pensions the position moved in 2026, when the Supreme Court in Maya Banerjee refused to apply the three-year cap to a family pension claim. Check the current position before you assume your arrears will be cut.

Papers to collect before the first meeting

The limits of a writ court in a disciplinary case

The judges look at how the decision was reached, not at who was telling the truth. Their questions: did the authority have power, whether the procedure in your rules was followed, whether you got a fair hearing, is there at least some evidence behind the finding, and is the punishment shockingly out of line with the fault. Guilt itself is not re-tried. The Supreme Court drew that line in the B.C. Chaturvedi case in 1995, and counsel for the department will cite it in nearly every disciplinary writ.

So the strongest writs point to something concrete: a document asked for and refused, a witness relied on but never offered for cross-examination, a punishment order by an officer below the appointing authority, an appellate order that ignores the appeal. A writ that says only that the enquiry officer believed the wrong witness rarely succeeds.

When it does find an error, the court can quash the order, direct reinstatement, order a fresh enquiry from a particular stage, or send the matter back for a reasoned appellate decision. Back wages are a separate question and are often reduced or refused where the employee was not working. Advocate B.K. Singh usually tells clients to judge a case by what the most likely order would actually look like, not by the best one imaginable.

Interim protection while the writ is pending

Interim orders in service writs are possible but given with care: a penalty, a recovery or a transfer can be stayed, yet judges hold back more often than not. A stay on dismissal is rare, because the court cannot easily undo the effect of paying someone it later finds was rightly removed. A stay on recovery from salary or on an order evicting you from government quarters is more realistic, especially where you show the hardship and a clear legal flaw.

For CAPF personnel facing transfer to a difficult posting in the middle of a pending case, courts usually expect you to comply and seek relief later, unless the transfer itself is shown to be a punishment in disguise. Pick the one interim prayer that really matters; a list of ten at the first hearing dilutes it.

Mistakes that weaken these writs

• Filing in the CAT first. Months are lost and the delay then has to be explained to the High Court. The time is not always excused.
• Skipping the revision. CAPF rules often provide both an appeal and a revision. Leaving out the second gives the court an easy reason to send you back.
• Choosing Delhi only because the directorate is there. If every event happened in one state, a petition in Delhi may be returned and you lose more time.
• Attaching the order without the record. A writ that does not annex the enquiry proceedings forces the court to rely on the department's version in the counter.
• Arguing facts like a trial. The grounds must point to illegality, unfairness, perversity or disproportion, not to a preference for your own witness.
• Ignoring the labour route for workmen. Advocate B.K. Singh asks every PSU or bank workman, at the first meeting, whether the industrial route would serve them better, because the time limit there is short and easy to miss.

If you lose: a Division Bench, then Delhi's Tilak Marg

If a single judge hears and dismisses your writ, most High Courts allow an intra-court appeal, called a Letters Patent Appeal or writ appeal, to a Division Bench. The time for it is short, usually thirty days, so get the certified copy quickly. Where the writ was heard by a Division Bench in the first place, there is no further appeal within that court.

Beyond the High Court lies the Supreme Court, approached by special leave under Article 136, ordinarily inside 90 days. Leave is entirely discretionary, and a large share of service SLPs end on the first day. Our page on special leave petitions in service cases sets out what usually persuades the court to take one up.

If you are a central civil servant who lost before the CAT, your route is different again: you challenge the tribunal's ruling by writ, as described on our page about a writ petition against a tribunal order.

Getting advice on your papers

We handle these writs from Dwarka in New Delhi and from Vaishali in Ghaziabad, and we take online briefings from men and women posted in border outposts, plant units and branches across the country. The first thing we look at is the final order and the date on it, then the rules your organisation applied. Fees come up at the first meeting and are put in writing for each stage, as set out on our page about process and fees. For a quick reference on forum choices across all central employees, see the forum map for central employees.

If your order came from a force, a PSU or a bank and you want to know whether a writ is open and which High Court to use, contact Advocate B.K. Singh for advice on your papers or for updates on the law.