On Deputation and Facing a Problem: Which Department Do You Sue?

The quick answer on a deputation dispute: which department

A central government employee on deputation answers to two offices at once. The parent department, also called the lending department, keeps your lien, your seniority and your place in the promotion queue. The borrowing department, where you actually work, pays your salary for the period, writes your reports and controls your day-to-day duties. When something goes wrong, the question of which department to sue turns on which of those two roles the problem touches.

A simple test works in most cases. First, identify the order that hurt you and the officer who signed it. That department is a necessary respondent. Second, ask what the tribunal would have to direct to put things right, and which department would have to carry out that direction. If it is the other department, it must be a respondent as well.

In the tribunal, you do not sue an officer by name in an ordinary case. You make the Union of India a respondent through the Secretary of the ministry or department concerned, and add the specific authority that passed the order, such as the Director General or the cadre controlling authority. Officers are named personally only when you allege mala fides against them, and then you must give real facts, not suspicion. Our guide on who to make a respondent in an OA explains the general rule.

Matching the problem to the right respondent

What stays with the parent cadre and what moves

Going on deputation does not make you an employee of the borrowing department. You hold your substantive post in the parent cadre by lien, and your seniority keeps running there. If a regular promotion falls due while you are away, the parent department's DPC considers you along with everyone else. If you are found fit, you are either recalled to take it up or given proforma promotion, usually under what is known as the next below rule, so that you do not lose out while serving elsewhere.

What moves to the borrowing department is your daily working life and most of the paperwork it generates. It sanctions your leave, pays your salary and deputation allowance, writes your APARs and decides whether your tenure continues. Where the deputation is to an autonomous body or PSU paid from outside the Consolidated Fund, it is technically foreign service under the Fundamental Rules, and the borrowing body must also pay leave salary and pension contributions to the government.

This split explains why so many disputes need both sides. Suppose your APAR for a deputation year is graded below benchmark and you miss a promotion back home. The grading came from the borrowing department, but the promotion is the parent cadre's business. A tribunal cannot direct a review DPC without the parent department before it, and cannot direct the grading to be reconsidered without the borrowing one.

Rules that decide who is responsible

Disciplinary trouble while you are posted out

This is where employees get confused most often. A Senior Technical Assistant from a CSIR laboratory, posted on deputation to a ministry, receives a suspension order signed by the ministry. Is that valid? Under Rule 20(1), yes: the borrowing authority has the power to suspend and to start proceedings. It must inform the lending authority, but a delay in informing is not, on its own, a sure ground for setting the suspension aside.

The inquiry can be held by the borrowing department. Once the inquiry report is in, the route depends on the proposed penalty. Minor penalties such as censure or withholding of increments can be imposed there after consulting the parent department. A major penalty such as reduction in rank, compulsory retirement or removal cannot; the case goes back to the parent department's disciplinary authority, which may decide on the record or hold further inquiry.

If you want to challenge the chargesheet itself, for example because it was issued by an officer who had no power under Rule 20, the borrowing department is your respondent. If you challenge a major penalty, the parent department passed it, so it must be a respondent, and the borrowing department joins if you attack how it ran the inquiry. Appeals follow the usual 45-day route under the CCS (CCA) Rules, addressed to the appellate authority named for whoever passed the penalty.

Railway employees lent to another organisation are governed by the matching provisions of the Railway Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1968, and defence civilians by the CCS (CCA) Rules as applied to their establishments. The logic is the same: the borrowing side can start the process, the parent side keeps the heavier powers.

Repatriation, extension and absorption

A deputationist has no enforceable right to complete the full tenure or to be absorbed. Courts have said this often. What you do have is a right to fair treatment under the government's own instructions: early repatriation should follow notice, should not be a disguised punishment, and should not single you out for reasons that have nothing to do with administrative need.

These decisions are almost always taken by the borrowing department, so it is the main respondent. The parent department comes in where it has refused to take you back, has kept you without a posting, or has withheld the no objection needed for an extension or absorption. If your repatriation followed a complaint against you and no inquiry was held, the order may be stigmatic, and that is a point worth raising in your representation. Our service page on early repatriation and refused absorption covers the grounds in more detail.

Absorption is governed by the borrowing organisation's recruitment rules. If those rules allow absorption and the borrowing department refuses without reasons, or absorbs someone junior who joined after you, you have a stronger case. If the rules do not provide for absorption into that post, the tribunal will rarely order it.

Money disputes: allowance, pay option and contributions

On deputation you usually choose between drawing the pay of the deputation post or keeping your own pay plus a deputation allowance. The borrowing department works this out. If the figure is wrong, the borrowing department is the respondent, because it is the drawing and disbursing office for that period. Our guide on deputation allowance rates and the pay option explains the calculation.

Problems often come from the parent department's side too. If it sent a wrong last pay certificate, the borrowing department may have fixed your pay on that wrong base. In that situation both must be before the tribunal: the parent department to correct the certificate, the borrowing department to refix your pay and release arrears.

For foreign service, unpaid leave salary and pension contributions surface years later, usually at retirement when the pension file is processed. The parent department may hold up your pension papers until the borrowing body pays. The employee should not suffer for that dispute between two offices, but to get relief you will usually need both of them, and the Pay and Accounts Office concerned, before the tribunal.

Working out your deputation respondents, step by step

1. Put the orders in a line

   List every order connected to your problem in date order: the deputation order, any extension, the repatriation or penalty order, the DPC result, the pay fixation. Next to each, write which office issued it.

2. Mark the order you are challenging

   Usually one or two orders do the real damage. Whoever issued those must be a respondent, through its Secretary or head of department.

3. Write the relief in one sentence

   For example: quash the repatriation order and let me complete my tenure, or hold a review DPC and give me proforma promotion from 2024. Then mark which department must act to give that relief.

4. Add anyone whose rights you affect

   If you claim promotion over a named junior or a particular vacancy, that person may need to be made a party. Leaving out an affected officer is a common reason for delay.

5. Send the representation to the decider

   Address it to the authority that can grant the relief, through proper channel, with a copy to the other department. Keep both acknowledgements; the six months under Section 20 start from that date.

6. Settle the forum

   If one of the departments is a body not covered by the tribunal, discuss with counsel whether that part of the dispute must go to the High Court instead.

Advocate B.K. Singh's first tip here is practical: before deciding on respondents, he asks the client for the original deputation order and the borrowing organisation's offer letter, because the terms and the authority named in them often settle who has power over what. People bring the repatriation order and forget the document that started it all.

Which bench hears a deputation case

You generally file before the bench covering the place where you are posted now, or where the cause of action arose wholly or in part. For a deputationist both can be in play. If you were on deputation in Chennai and have been repatriated to Kolkata, the order arose in Chennai and you are now posted in Kolkata, so either bench may have jurisdiction depending on the facts.

Where the order was passed at a ministry headquarters in New Delhi and you work in a regional office, the Principal Bench and your local bench may both have a link to the dispute. Filing locally is usually more convenient, but ask your counsel to check the bench's territorial rules before filing, because a jurisdiction objection can cost months. Our Central Administrative Tribunal lawyer page lists the benches and their areas.

Retired employees whose deputation-related dispute has surfaced at the pension stage can generally file where they now ordinarily reside.

When the borrowing organisation is not under the tribunal

The tribunal hears service matters of central government employees, and of bodies notified under Section 14(2) of the Administrative Tribunals Act. Many deputations are to places outside that circle: a public sector undertaking, a nationalised bank, a central university that is not notified, or a State Government.

If you remain a central government servant on deputation, your service matters with the parent department, such as promotion, seniority and lien, stay with the tribunal. A quarrel with the borrowing body over something only it can decide, such as its own internal posting or its refusal to absorb you under its rules, may need to go to the High Court if that body is not notified. Our guide on checking whether an organisation is notified under Section 14(2) shows how to find out.

Officers of a State Government who come to a central post on deputation are a separate case. Disputes about their parent state cadre usually belong before their State Administrative Tribunal or High Court, while disputes about the central post they hold can sometimes come before the Central Administrative Tribunal. This is an area where advice on your specific facts is worth taking before filing anything.

Ordnance factory employees moved to the new defence companies after 2021 were placed on deemed deputation, which raises its own forum questions; our guide on ordnance factory employees after 2021 discusses that position.

Mistakes deputationists make

• Writing only to the borrowing office. If the relief needs the parent cadre to act, a representation that never reached it gives the parent department an easy objection.
• Waiting for the tenure to end before complaining. An early repatriation or a bad APAR should be raised at once. The one-year limit runs regardless of where you are posted.
• Assuming the parent department knows. Borrowing offices are supposed to inform the lending authority of suspensions and proceedings, but they sometimes do not. Send your own letter.
• Losing the deputation order. Its terms on tenure, pay option and the authority competent to repatriate are often the most useful paper in the file.
• Ignoring the APAR for the deputation years. Ask for disclosure and represent within the window; that grading will follow you to the next DPC.
• Naming officers personally without cause. Personal allegations without facts make the case harder and rarely add anything.

Papers to collect from each side

Timelines and what it costs

A deputation dispute follows the usual service case rhythm. You write a representation and normally wait up to six months under Section 20. You have one year after that, or one year from a final rejection, to file an OA. In the tribunal, an early repatriation case with an urgent interim prayer can be listed within days; a promotion or absorption claim that needs replies from two departments commonly takes one to two years or more to reach a final order.

Two respondents can mean two replies and two sets of requests for time. Counsel can ask the bench to direct both to file within a fixed period. The tribunal's filing fee is small and fixed, and the other costs are for copies, typing and affidavits. Professional fees are agreed in writing at the first meeting, stage by stage.

If you want an interim order stopping a repatriation, file before you are relieved if you can. Once you have joined back in the parent department, a stay is harder to justify, though a final order can still set things right.

Before you send that first letter

Advocate B.K. Singh's second tip is to keep the two departments' correspondence in two separate folders, each in date order, and to note on every letter which department received a copy. In deputation cases the tribunal often has to work out who knew what and when, and a clear trail of copies answers that question before the department's counsel raises it.

Then write one representation that sets out the whole problem, addressed to the authority that can grant the main relief, with copies to the other department. Keep the language factual, quote the deputation order and the DoPT instructions, and ask for specific relief. If you are unsure which department to sue, or whether the dispute belongs before the tribunal at all, you can see our deputation and repatriation service page and the forum map for central employees.

For advice on your deputation papers, or for updates on changes in the deputation rules, contact Advocate B.K. Singh.