In short. If you serve, served or applied for a central government post in Madhya Pradesh or Chhattisgarh, your service dispute belongs at the Jabalpur Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal. A writ against what it decides goes to the Madhya Pradesh High Court or the Chhattisgarh High Court, depending on where the case comes from. Expect one to three years to a final order, with interim relief possible at the first hearing. Before anything else, find the order you are challenging and the date it reached you, and check whether your employer is a government department or a company.
Is this your situation?
- You work in a central office in Madhya Pradesh or Chhattisgarh, for example a railway division, a postal circle, an Army station, a DRDO laboratory or a tax office, and an order has gone against you.
- You were working in one of the Jabalpur ordnance factories when they became defence companies in 2021 and are unsure which forum now hears your grievance.
- You retired from a central post and live in Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Raipur, Bilaspur or a smaller town in either state.
- You were rejected in a central recruitment held in this region and want to challenge the decision.
- You want to know whether your case can be heard nearer home than Jabalpur.
- You work for BHEL, SECL, SAIL's Bhilai plant or the security paper mill and are not sure the tribunal covers you.
One bench for two states
The Jabalpur Bench takes central service cases from every district of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. When Chhattisgarh was carved out in 2000, its central employees stayed with Jabalpur, so a postal assistant in Jagdalpur and a railway clerk in Ratlam file at the same bench, several hundred kilometres apart.
The bench has held circuit sittings to cut that distance. Panels of central government counsel have been named for a CAT circuit at Bilaspur, and Indore and Gwalior are also mentioned as circuit venues. We could not confirm a current fixed schedule for any of them. Treat a circuit sitting as something to ask the registry about, not something to rely on, and file at Jabalpur within time in every case. The official CAT website carries the notices.
Most hearings are now also possible by video, which matters more in practice than the circuit calendar. An employee in Ambikapur or Sheopur can usually follow the case without travelling, provided the advocate's contact details and the case number are kept handy. Our guide to virtual hearings before a CAT bench covers the practical steps, from the link to the dress code.
Where your case comes from and where it can go next
| Region | Typical central employers | Tribunal | Writ after the tribunal (generally) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jabalpur and Mahakoshal | West Central Railway headquarters, Army and MES units, Central Ordnance Depot, the corporatised ordnance factories | Jabalpur Bench | Madhya Pradesh High Court, principal seat at Jabalpur |
| Bhopal and Narmadapuram | Railway division, postal circle office, income tax, ICAR institutes, AIIMS Bhopal | Jabalpur Bench | Madhya Pradesh High Court; check which seat |
| Indore, Ujjain and Malwa | Western Railway's Ratlam division, Army establishments at Mhow, RRCAT, customs and GST offices | Jabalpur Bench | Madhya Pradesh High Court, Indore Bench, for districts assigned to it; check |
| Gwalior and Chambal | Accountant General offices, DRDO laboratory, Army and Air Force civilians | Jabalpur Bench | Madhya Pradesh High Court, Gwalior Bench, for districts assigned to it; check |
| Raipur, Bilaspur, Durg and Bastar | South East Central Railway headquarters and divisions, postal circle, AIIMS Raipur, tax offices | Jabalpur Bench | Chhattisgarh High Court at Bilaspur |
The ordnance factory question
Few cities depend on defence production the way Jabalpur does. Four large units stand within its limits: GCF, the Vehicle Factory, OFK at Khamaria and the Grey Iron Foundry. In October 2021 the government wound up the Ordnance Factory Board and gave its units to seven newly formed defence companies. The workforce went across on what the orders called deemed deputation, still holding central government status while that arrangement lasted.
That change affects the forum. A dispute about something that happened before October 2021, such as an old penalty, an MACP claim for an earlier period, or pension of someone who retired before the change, has generally remained with the CAT. A dispute about how the new company treats a person now is a harder question and depends on the current status of deputation and absorption, which has been revised more than once. Get advice on this specific point before you file. Our guide on ordnance factory employees after 2021 and our page on defence production employees explain the background.
Other central offices whose staff file here, and some who do not
- Railway divisions that cross state lines. West Central Railway's Kota division lies in Rajasthan and its staff usually file at Jaipur. South East Central Railway's Nagpur division lies in Maharashtra and its staff usually file at the Mumbai Bench or its Nagpur circuit. Staff of the Jabalpur, Bhopal, Bilaspur, Raipur and Ratlam divisions posted inside the two states file at Jabalpur.
- Defence civilians. MES, the Central Ordnance Depot at Jabalpur, the Army establishments at Mhow and the Air Force station at Gwalior employ civilians who come to the CAT. Uniformed personnel go to the Armed Forces Tribunal.
- Science and research. RRCAT at Indore under the Department of Atomic Energy, DRDO's laboratory at Gwalior, and ICAR institutes at Bhopal. Society-run bodies are covered only if notified under Section 14(2); check first.
- Audit and revenue. The Accountant General offices at Gwalior, income tax offices across both states, and CGST and customs commissionerates.
- Not here. BHEL Bhopal, SECL at Bilaspur, SAIL's Bhilai Steel Plant, NMDC and the security paper mill at Narmadapuram are companies, and their employees go to the High Court or labour forums. BSF staff at the Tekanpur academy and CRPF units in Bastar go to the High Court. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh state employees go to their High Courts; Madhya Pradesh's own state administrative tribunal was abolished years ago.
The law on where and when to file
Rule 6, CAT (Procedure) Rules, 1987
Two facts fix the bench: your place of posting on the filing date, and the place where the grievance arose, even partly. Take a sorting assistant in Durg turned down for promotion by the circle office at Raipur. Both facts point to Jabalpur.
Retired, dismissed or terminated employees may also file at the bench for the place they ordinarily live, under Rule 6(2). A mechanic who retired from a Western Railway workshop in Gujarat and moved home to Ujjain can use Jabalpur.
Sections 19 to 21, Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985
An aggrieved employee applies under Section 19 after trying the departmental remedy under Section 20. If an appeal or representation sits undecided for six months, you may file without waiting further. The application must be within one year of the final order or of the expiry of those six months (Section 21). Delay beyond that needs a separate application for condonation with reasons supported by documents.
Section 24 and Section 25, Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985
Section 24 governs interim orders: the bench must give the other side a chance to respond, except in urgent situations where a short-term order can be passed. Section 25 lets the Chairman move a pending case to another bench, which is sometimes useful when an employee is transferred out of the two states mid-case. See our page on Section 25 transfer petitions.
How a case starts and moves at Jabalpur
Collect the order and its history
Ask the office for a signed copy of the order you want to challenge. Get the notices, inquiry papers or audit note that came before it. If the order refers to a policy circular, ask for that too.
Exhaust the departmental remedy
File the statutory appeal or a representation, addressed to the right authority and sent through proper channel. Under the CCS (CCA) Rules, a penalty appeal goes within 45 days; railway staff follow the Railway Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1968. Keep the receipt.
Work out limitation
Count one year from the final order or from six months after the appeal or representation was received. If you are already late, gather every paper that explains why, such as hospital records or later correspondence.
Draft and assemble the OA
The OA sets out facts in order, grounds, and the exact relief, with annexures paged and indexed. Hindi documents may need typed English versions for the record; ask the registry or your advocate about current practice.
File and get a date
File at the Jabalpur registry or through the CAT e-filing portal. The registry checks for defects. Once cured, the case is listed for admission, where notice and any stay are considered.
Pleadings and hearing
The department replies, you file a rejoinder, and the case waits for final hearing. If the department issues a fresh order during the case, the OA may need to be amended.
After the order
Serve a copy on the department and diarise the date for compliance. If either side challenges it, the writ goes to the High Court for the state where the case arose.
Advocate B.K. Singh's habit is to ask for the order sheet of any earlier case on the same issue before drafting. In railway and ordnance matters, a co-worker's earlier order on identical facts can shorten the case or show what the department has already argued.
Timeline and expenses
| Step | Usual time | What you spend |
|---|---|---|
| Department considers your appeal or representation | Up to six months before you are free to file | Registered post or courier |
| File prepared | One to three weeks after papers are in hand | Photocopies, scanning, notary, any translation |
| Registry scrutiny | A few days to two weeks | Rs 50 OA fee under Rule 7 of the CAT (Procedure) Rules; the registry will confirm the current figure and mode |
| Admission and notice | Within weeks of a clean filing in most cases | Service costs where the bench directs |
| Reply and rejoinder | Two to six months, extensions common | Copies and filing |
| Final order | Roughly one to three years from filing | Travel to Jabalpur only if hearing in person |
| Writ in the MP or Chhattisgarh High Court | Several months to years | High Court fees, which are separate |
Papers that make a Jabalpur case possible
Core papers
- The order you want quashed, with the date of receipt
- Chargesheet, show cause notice or audit objection and your reply
- Appeal or representation, with the receipt or acknowledgement
- Any reply or rejection letter from the department
Service record
- Appointment and confirmation orders
- Pay fixation sheets, MACP or promotion orders
- Service book extracts or e-Service Book printout
- APARs, if promotion or MACP is in dispute
For ordnance factory staff
- The order placing you on deemed deputation in 2021 and any later order on absorption
- Your option form, if you were asked to give one
- Any letter from the new company on pay, leave or discipline
For pensioners and families
- PPO and pension calculation
- Recovery or revision letter
- Death certificate and family details for family pension
Papers in Hindi, and getting hold of your service record
In both states a good part of the office file is in Hindi: noting sheets, transfer orders from divisional offices, inquiry proceedings in smaller units. You are entitled to write to your own office in Hindi, but the tribunal's record is generally kept in English, and a bench member may ask for an English version of a key page. Check with the registry or your advocate what is needed at the time of filing, and get the important pages typed in English rather than relying on a summary.
The service book is the other common gap. Many employees have never seen theirs, even though it should be shown to them every year. Ask for a copy in writing; if the office has moved to the e-Service Book, a printout of the verified entries will do. If the office does not respond, an RTI application for your own service record is the usual next step, and the delay itself can be explained to the bench. Advocate B.K. Singh reads the service book before anything else in pay and pension matters, because the mistake is often sitting in an entry made decades ago.
A goods guard in Raipur division, medically decategorised
Here's a made-up example. Shailendra, 44, a goods guard in South East Central Railway's Raipur division, fails a periodic medical examination for eyesight and is declared unfit for his category. Railway rules provide that a decategorised employee should be found a suitable alternative post with pay protection. Instead, the division keeps him on the supernumerary list for fourteen months and then offers a post two pay levels lower.
He writes to the divisional office twice. The second letter, asking for a post in his own pay level, gets no reply in six months. He files an OA at the Jabalpur Bench, attaching the medical certificate, the decategorisation order, the offer letter and both representations, and asks for a direction to consider him for a post in his own level with protection of pay.
Because his case arose in Chhattisgarh, a writ against the tribunal's final order, by either side, would go to the Chhattisgarh High Court at Bilaspur. The outcome of a real case like this would depend on the alternative posts actually available and on the medical classification; our guide on alternative jobs after decategorisation explains the rules.
Two High Courts and three seats
The Supreme Court's 1997 ruling in L. Chandra Kumar keeps every tribunal order within reach of a two-judge writ bench of the High Court. The Jabalpur Bench is unusual in answering to two of them. A dispute from an MP district is taken to the Madhya Pradesh High Court, whose principal seat is in Jabalpur and whose other benches sit at Indore and Gwalior. A dispute from a Chhattisgarh district is taken to Bilaspur, where the Chhattisgarh High Court sits.
Inside Madhya Pradesh, the seat depends on the district the case arose from, under that High Court's own arrangement. Look up the present district allocation first; papers lodged at the wrong seat come back. The Supreme Court is reachable afterwards by special leave, ordinarily within 90 days of the High Court's judgment. For the grounds a writ bench actually entertains, see our note on challenging a tribunal order by writ.
Officers, Group C staff, pensioners and candidates
IAS, IPS and IFS officers of the Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh cadres file their service disputes at Jabalpur, though matters tied to central deputation or empanelment in Delhi may also have a cause of action at the Principal Bench. Group A and B officers of central services posted in the two states use this bench for DPC, seniority and APAR disputes. Their cases are usually won or lost on the DPC minutes and the benchmark applied, so an RTI request for those records is often the first step.
The largest number of cases come from Group C railway staff, postal employees, defence civilians and ordnance workers: recovery orders, MACP, transfer, decategorisation and minor penalties. Our page for defence civilian staff deals with the MES and depot cases that are common around Jabalpur and Mhow.
Retirees may file where they live. Family pensioners, often widows in smaller towns, can file at Jabalpur even if the employee served elsewhere. Candidates rejected by a railway recruitment board at Bhopal or Bilaspur, or in a Staff Selection Commission recruitment run from the commission's regional office at Raipur, file here when the cause of action arose in the two states. Recruitment to the central armed police forces goes to the High Court instead.
Pension and family pension claims from the two states
Jabalpur, Bhopal, Gwalior and Bilaspur have large communities of central pensioners: retired ordnance workers, railwaymen, postal staff, audit clerks and defence civilians. Their cases follow a pattern. Pension fixed on the wrong last pay, a 30 June retirement that missed the 1 July increment, commutation restored late, recovery of an old overpayment from the pension, and family pension stuck because a name was missing from the family details form.
Take the 30 June retirees first. After the Supreme Court decided Mundinamani in 2023, DoPT orders of 2024 and 2025 let the missed increment count towards pension (not other dues) for people who left service on 30 June or 31 December, with arrears limited by date. Read the latest order before you file, because the arrears conditions decide how much is actually at stake. For delayed pension or gratuity, Rule 65 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 provides for interest where the delay is the office's fault. And for older arrears, the three-year cap that departments rely on is no longer settled for pension claims after the Supreme Court's 2026 decisions, so the claim should be framed with care.
A pensioner can file at Jabalpur under Rule 6(2) if he or she now lives anywhere in the two states, even if the last posting was in Pune or Delhi. Our page on central government pension disputes goes through the common grounds.
Stays and urgent hearings
An interim order is asked for in the OA itself and considered at the first hearing. Recovery from salary or pension, transfer of an employee with a disabled child, and reversion after long officiation are typical situations where it is sought. The bench looks at whether there is a serious question, whether you will suffer harm that cannot be undone later, and where the balance of hardship lies.
Keep the prayer specific: name the order and what you want stopped. If you have already been relieved from your post, a stay of the transfer may be refused because the act is complete; ask instead for directions on posting or for an early hearing. Our page on interim stay applications covers the practice.
If you are transferred out of the two states mid-case
A transfer after filing does not take the case away from Jabalpur. Rule 6 looks at your posting on the date of filing, and an OA properly filed stays where it is. Hearings by video mean that an employee moved from Itarsi to Ahmedabad can usually carry on without changing benches.
Sometimes a move is still sensible: for example, when the department has filed an identical case at another bench, or when the employee's evidence and witnesses are now elsewhere. Then a transfer petition under Section 25 is made to the Chairman, who decides it on the balance of convenience. It is not granted for the asking, and the case continues at Jabalpur until an order is made.
Mistakes that set Jabalpur cases back
- Assuming every ordnance dispute is still a CAT case. The forum after October 2021 depends on what the dispute is about and when it arose.
- Filing a PSU case at the tribunal. BHEL, SECL and Bhilai Steel Plant staff are company employees; the tribunal will return the matter.
- Putting the writ in the wrong High Court. A Chhattisgarh case goes to Bilaspur, not to Jabalpur, even though the tribunal sits in Jabalpur.
- Waiting for a circuit sitting. There is no reliable schedule, and limitation does not pause for one.
- Counting limitation from a reply to a reminder. A reply that simply repeats an old refusal does not create a fresh cause of action.
Cases that may not be worth bringing
A claim that depends on a pay or allowance rule the government never adopted for your post, or on a benefit given to a different cadre under a different rule, will be hard to win however unfair it feels. Compassionate appointment claims made many years after the death, when the family has since managed, rarely succeed. Advocate B.K. Singh tells clients at the outset when a claim looks weak, and suggests a representation or a CPGRAMS grievance where that is a better first step.
Long-pending claims from casual staff for regularisation face the limits of Umadevi (2006), though later decisions, including Jaggo v. Union of India (2024) and Dharam Singh (2025), have looked closely at long-serving temporary workers. Each such claim needs a hard look at the actual engagement records before a case is filed.
How our firm works on Jabalpur Bench matters
Please note who is speaking here: B.K. Singh & Associates, a private practice of advocates based in Dwarka, New Delhi and in Vaishali, Ghaziabad. The firm has no tie with the Central Administrative Tribunal or its Jabalpur Bench, and official notices, cause lists and orders should be taken only from the tribunal's website.
Most clients from these two states never need to visit us. They talk to us online, send scans, and see the draft before it is filed; where a member must be addressed in person at Jabalpur, associate counsel there appear with our brief. For clients in and around the state capital, our page on central government employee cases in Bhopal has more local detail. Fees are discussed at the first meeting and agreed in writing for each stage.
This week
Put the order, the papers before it and your appeal or representation in one folder. Mark the one-year date. If you are an ordnance factory employee, add every order about your deputation or absorption since 2021. If a recovery or relieving order is about to take effect, do not wait for another letter from the office; an OA with a stay application needs a few days to prepare.
For advice on your papers or updates on the law for central employees in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, contact Advocate B.K. Singh.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the CAT Jabalpur Bench sit?
In Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. Check the address on the official CAT website before you travel. Filing can be done online and many hearings are held by video.
Does CAT Jabalpur hold sittings in Bilaspur, Indore or Gwalior?
Government counsel panels refer to a CAT circuit at Bilaspur, and Indore and Gwalior are also mentioned as circuit venues. We could not confirm a fixed current schedule. Ask the registry, and never delay filing in the hope of a local sitting.
Can Chhattisgarh central employees file at CAT Jabalpur?
Yes. Central government employees in Chhattisgarh fall under the Jabalpur Bench. A writ against its order in a Chhattisgarh case goes to the Chhattisgarh High Court at Bilaspur.
Are Vehicle Factory Jabalpur employees still under CAT?
It depends on the dispute. Matters from before October 2021, and pensions of those who retired earlier, have generally stayed with the tribunal. Disputes about treatment by the new defence company depend on the current deputation and absorption orders, so take advice first.
Can a BHEL Bhopal employee file in CAT?
Generally no. BHEL is a public sector company, not a government department, and its staff approach the Madhya Pradesh High Court or the labour forums. The same applies to SECL and Bhilai Steel Plant staff.
I am an MP state government employee. Where do I go?
To the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The CAT hears central government staff and notified bodies only, and the state's own administrative tribunal no longer exists.
Is there a limit on how old a claim I can bring?
Yes. Section 21 allows twelve months from the final order, or twelve months after a pending appeal has gone unanswered for half a year. Anything later must come with a plea to condone the delay. Continuing claims like pay fixation can be brought later, but arrears may be limited.
What will I pay the tribunal to file an OA?
The tribunal's fee is small: Rule 7 of the CAT (Procedure) Rules sets Rs 50, though you should confirm the current amount and mode of payment with the registry. Your other costs are copying, typing and the advocate's fee, agreed separately.