Appeal Rejected? Revision Under Rule 29 and Review by the President Under Rule 29A

What is left once the appeal is rejected

Three things remain open. You can ask the revising authority to revise the order under Rule 29. You can ask the President to review it under Rule 29A, but only if new material has come to light. And you can take the case to the Central Administrative Tribunal by an Original Application, which need not wait for either.

Most people with a rejected appeal assume they must exhaust revision before the tribunal will hear them. That is not so. Section 20 of the Act wants departmental remedies tried first, but the tribunal has long treated revision as a discretionary power of the government, not a right you are forced to use. A rejected appeal is normally enough to approach the tribunal.

The useful question, then, is whether revision is worth filing in your particular case. Sometimes it is. A revision petition costs nothing, reaches an authority above the one that rejected your appeal, and can succeed where the appeal failed because the appellate order was lazy. Sometimes it is a waste of months, or worse, an invitation to a harsher penalty. What follows should help you tell which one you are in.

Rules 29 and 29A, read plainly

Revision, review and a tribunal case compared

Who your revising authority is

Start with the schedule of your service or the delegation orders of your department, which tell you who the disciplinary and appellate authorities are for your post. The revising authority is generally the next level above the appellate authority, or a named authority like the CAG or the Member (Personnel). For a Group C clerk in a central ministry, the appellate authority may be a Joint Secretary and the revising authority the Secretary or the President. For an auditor in an Accountant General's office, the CAG is a revising authority. For a postal assistant, the chain may run through the Director of Postal Services and the Chief Postmaster General up to the Member (Personnel).

Petitions sent to the wrong person are a common waste of time. A revision addressed to the same officer who rejected your appeal is not a revision at all; at best it is treated as a representation, and representations made after the final order do not extend your time to go to the tribunal. If the order is unclear about who is above whom, an RTI request for the delegation order settles it.

The level of your post changes the picture. For Group C and the old Group D posts, the whole chain from disciplinary authority to revising authority usually sits inside one department, often within a single region or circle, and decisions come faster. For Group B and Group A officers, the President is frequently the disciplinary or appellate authority, UPSC has to be consulted before a penalty is modified, and the file moves between the ministry, the Commission and sometimes the CVC. A revision for an officer can easily take a year. That delay is one more reason to keep the tribunal date diaried from the start.

Revision can cut both ways

The power to revise includes the power to increase. An authority reading your petition may decide that the penalty was too light, and once your file is on its table, nothing stops it from saying so. The rule requires that you be given notice and a chance to answer, and an inquiry if the increase is to a major penalty that was imposed without one. Even so, an employee who went in hoping to turn a censure into nothing can come out with a reduction in pay.

This is the first thing Advocate B.K. Singh weighs when a client asks about revision. If the charge was proved on solid evidence and the penalty was mild for what was found, a revision petition carries more risk than reward, and the tribunal, which cannot increase the penalty, is the safer forum for any legal point. If the penalty is harsh for the finding, or the appellate order ignored the main grounds, revision has a better balance. Look at our note on the proportionality test for penalties to judge where yours falls.

Review under Rule 29A needs something genuinely new

A Rule 29A petition that repeats the appeal grounds in different words will be rejected, and rightly. Before 1981 the President's review power was wider; the rule was rewritten after the Delhi High Court's decision in R.K. Gupta, and the present version allows a review only when new material, not available earlier, changes the complexion of the case. Rearguing the evidence is not new material. Discovering that you had a better argument is not new material.

What can qualify: an acquittal on merits by a criminal court on the very facts of the charge, where the acquittal came after the departmental order; a document from the department's own records, withheld during the inquiry and obtained later through RTI, that contradicts a key witness; a forensic report that was pending when the order was passed. Even then, the President is not bound to reopen the case, and an acquittal on benefit of doubt usually carries little weight. Our page on criminal trial and departmental proceedings on the same facts explains why.

Where the President was the disciplinary authority, for example for many Group A officers, Rule 29A is often the only departmental remedy left, because no appeal lies against an order of the President. For such officers, the practical choice is usually between a review petition based on real new material and a direct application to the tribunal.

Memorials and mercy petitions to the President

A memorial is an old form of petition addressed to the President, outside the CCS (CCA) Rules, governed by administrative instructions on petitions and memorials. Employees sometimes send one asking for mercy after every other remedy has failed. It is not a statutory remedy, and it does not keep your tribunal limitation alive.

We do not say a memorial never helps. A long-serving employee near retirement who admits the lapse and asks for a lighter penalty on humanitarian grounds sometimes gets relief this way, especially where pension is affected. But it should be sent alongside a decision about the tribunal, not instead of one. A family that waits two years for a reply to a memorial usually finds that the tribunal route has closed in the meantime, with condonation of delay the only way back.

The limitation clock does not wait for revision

Under Section 21 you have a year from the final order. Where an appeal or representation under the rules has been made and not decided, the year starts once six months have passed from the date it was made. The leading case is S.S. Rathore v. State of M.P. (1989): time counts from the higher authority's decision on a remedy the rules provide, while extra representations nobody asked for buy you nothing.

Whether a revision petition is a statutory remedy that restarts the clock has been argued both ways, and benches have not always agreed. Treat the date of the appellate order as the start of your year. If the revision is decided against you within that year, challenge both orders together. If the revision is still pending as the year runs out, file in the tribunal anyway; the revision then falls away, because Section 19(4) treats pending departmental proceedings on the same grievance as abated once the application is admitted. If you are already past the year, read our page on condoning a late filing under Section 21.

Writing and sending a revision petition

A revision petition is not a second copy of the appeal. It succeeds when it shows the higher authority, in a few pages, what the appellate authority failed to deal with.

1. Read the appellate order line by line

   List every ground you raised in the appeal and mark which ones the order answered and which it ignored. Under Rule 27 the appellate authority had to look at three things: the procedure, the evidence behind the findings, and the fit of the penalty. An order silent on any of them is itself a ground.

2. Identify the correct revising authority

   Check the delegation schedule for your post and confirm who sits above the appellate authority. Address the petition to that authority by designation, not by name.

3. Keep it short and specific

   Set out the order challenged, dates, the penalty, and then the grounds, each tied to a page of the record. Two or three strong grounds work better than twenty weak ones. Attach the penalty order, the appellate order and the inquiry report; do not attach the whole file.

4. Ask for what you want and for a hearing

   State the relief plainly: set aside the penalty, reduce it to a named lesser penalty, or remit for a fresh inquiry. If you want to be heard in person, ask in writing; there is no automatic hearing, and authorities rarely offer one unasked.

5. Send through proper channel and keep proof

   Submit through your head of office with an advance copy direct to the revising authority, by speed post or the department's e-office system. Keep the dated acknowledgment, because you may later need to prove when it was filed.

Diary the date one year from the appellate order in your phone the same day. That date does not move because a petition is pending.

Documents for a revision or review petition

Grounds that tend to work in revision

• The appellate order does not deal with your grounds. An order that just says the appeal has no merit, without addressing the points, falls short of Rule 27 and is a common reason for revision or the tribunal to send a case back.
• The penalty is out of line with others in the same case. If two employees were charged on identical facts and one got censure while you lost two increments with cumulative effect, explain the difference or ask for parity.
• Denial of documents or witnesses. A refusal to supply a listed document or call a defence witness, without good reason recorded, goes to the fairness of the whole inquiry.
• Wrong authority. A major penalty imposed by an officer below the appointing authority is void under Article 311(1), and revision is a quick way to point it out.
• Advice not shared. Where UPSC or CVC advice was relied on but never given to you before the penalty, the order is open to challenge; see our note on getting UPSC advice before a penalty.

Time and expense from rejected appeal onward

When to skip revision and go to the tribunal

Go straight to the tribunal when the defect is one of law the department is unlikely to admit: an inquiry held without giving you documents, a penalty imposed by an incompetent authority, a finding based on no evidence, or a dismissal where Article 311(2) was bypassed without real reasons. A revising authority in the same ministry rarely overturns its own officers on such points, while the tribunal deals with them every week. Our page on challenging dismissal or removal covers the most serious cases.

Go straight to the tribunal also when time is short. If ten months have already gone since the appellate order, a revision petition only adds risk. And go straight to the tribunal when an interim order is needed, for example where a recovery is being made from your pay as part of the penalty.

Revision makes more sense where the problem is one of judgment rather than law: severity, parity, a sympathetic factor the appellate authority ignored. Our page on filing an Original Application under Section 19 explains what the tribunal expects when you do go.

Railway, postal, defence civilian and CAPF staff

Railway employees are under the Railway Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1968, which have their own revision and review provisions in Rules 25 and 25A, with revising authorities defined in railway terms and their own time conditions. The idea is the same as under the CCS (CCA) Rules, but check the railway rule and the zone's instructions before relying on any date. Our railway employee service page has more on the railway chain.

Postal staff, including those in the Mail Motor Service and RMS, follow the CCS (CCA) Rules, with the Member (Personnel) of the Postal Services Board among the revising authorities. Gramin Dak Sevaks are governed by their own GDS conduct and engagement rules, which contain their own appeal and review provisions. Civilian employees in defence establishments are under the CCS (CCA) Rules, with revision up the Ministry of Defence chain.

Members of CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP and SSB follow their own force rules, and after revision their remedy is a writ in the High Court, not the tribunal. Our guide on CAPF appeal, revision and writ sets out that route.

Retirees and pension cut orders

If you retired while the case was on and the department then cut or withheld your pension under Rule 8 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021, that is an order of the President under the pension rules, not a penalty under the CCS (CCA) Rules. There is no appeal against it. A request for review on new material can be made, but most such cases are taken to the tribunal on the legal tests in Rule 8: whether grave misconduct or negligence was found in proceedings, whether the four-year limit for events was respected, and whether UPSC was consulted where needed.

A retired employee who was given a major penalty just before retirement, and whose appeal failed, has the same revision and review options as a serving one. The difference is that every month of delay is a month of reduced pension, so the balance tips more often towards an early tribunal filing.

Families of employees who died while a penalty or appeal was pending sometimes ask whether they can continue a revision. The disciplinary case ends with death, but its effect on arrears, pay fixation and family pension may not, and a legal heir can usually pursue the money consequences before the department or the tribunal. That needs a separate look at the papers.

Where revision and review petitions usually go wrong

• Waiting for the reply before thinking about the tribunal. Months pass, the year ends, and the client arrives with a delay to explain.
• Copying the appeal word for word. The revising authority sees that the appeal grounds were already rejected and does the same.
• Sending a second and third revision. Repeated petitions do not restart limitation and irritate the authority deciding them.
• Calling old arguments new material. A Rule 29A petition without fresh evidence is rejected on that ground alone.
• Ignoring the risk of enhancement. Advocate B.K. Singh has seen petitions turn a minor penalty into a show cause notice for a major one.

Before you send anything

Put the appellate order, the penalty order and the inquiry report on one table and answer three questions honestly. Is the problem one of law or one of judgment? Is there anything genuinely new since the appeal? How many months are left in the year from the appellate order? Those three answers decide whether you revise, ask for review, go to the tribunal, or combine them.

If your appeal has been rejected and you want your papers read before choosing a route, or want updates on how tribunals are treating revision and limitation, contact Advocate B.K. Singh.