In short. Before you file a case in the Central Administrative Tribunal, Section 20 of the Administrative Tribunals Act expects you to use the remedy your service rules give you: an appeal against a penalty, a representation against an APAR, seniority list or pay fixation, and so on. Once that remedy is decided against you, or six months pass without a decision, the tribunal's door is open. The representation is not a formality. Written well, it fixes your limitation, frames the later OA and sometimes ends the dispute. This page shows what to write, to whom, and when you can go straight to the tribunal.
Is this your situation?
- You received an adverse order and want to know whether you must appeal before going to the tribunal.
- You sent a representation months ago and nobody has replied.
- Your OA was returned or disposed of with a direction to 'first represent to the department'.
- You have written several letters over the years and are unsure which one counts for limitation.
- You are a pensioner or candidate and do not know whom to write to.
- The order is so urgent, such as a recovery or relieving order, that waiting six months would defeat the purpose.
What Section 20 actually says
Section 20(1) tells the tribunal not to admit an OA, ordinarily, unless the employee has first used every remedy that his service rules give him for the grievance. Section 20(2) then explains when that condition is met: either the department has passed a final order rejecting your appeal or representation, or six months have gone by since you submitted it without any final order.
Section 20(3) adds a point people miss. Writing a memorial to the President or the Governor is optional. It does not count as one of the remedies you are bound to use, unless you decide to send one. So you are not required to write to the President before going to the tribunal, but if you do, the tribunal may wait for that to run its course.
The word 'ordinarily' matters. It means the rule is one of practice and good sense, not an absolute bar. The tribunal can admit an OA without the departmental remedy where the circumstances justify it. But the default is that you go to the department first, and an OA filed without doing so is often disposed of at the first hearing with a direction to represent.
Why the departmental stage is worth doing well
Many employees treat the representation as a hurdle to clear on the way to the tribunal. That is a mistake for three reasons. First, a fair number of disputes end at this stage. Pay fixation errors, missed increments, a wrong date in a seniority list and a misread MACP condition are often corrected by an officer who simply looks at the rule properly for the first time.
Second, the representation becomes Annexure A-something in your OA. Whatever you said in it, and whatever you left out, will be read by the department's counsel and the bench. An argument raised for the first time in the OA, never put to the department, invites the reply that the department was not given a chance to consider it.
Third, limitation runs from the decision on the remedy. Section 21(1)(b) gives you one year from the end of the six months allowed for deciding it, if it is not decided, and Section 21(1)(a) gives one year from the final order if it is. The Supreme Court in S.S. Rathore v. State of Madhya Pradesh (1989) said only the remedy provided by law counts for this; repeated unsuccessful representations not provided by law do not keep stretching the time. So the first proper representation or appeal is the one that sets your clock.
One more point on who writes. A letter from your union or association, raising a grievance for a whole cadre, is useful pressure but is not usually treated as your own representation. If the issue affects your pay, seniority or pension, sign and send a representation in your own name as well, even if it is short and refers to the union's letter. When several colleagues share the same grievance, each should do this; it also makes a later joint OA easier to justify.
Which remedy applies to which grievance
| Grievance | Remedy under the rules | Time limit to note | To whom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minor or major penalty under the CCS (CCA) Rules | Appeal under Rule 23 | 45 days from receiving the order | The appellate authority named in the schedule or the order |
| Penalty on railway staff under the RS (D&A) Rules, 1968 | Appeal under Rules 18 to 20 | 45 days | Appellate authority under those rules |
| Appeal rejected | Revision under Rule 29 or review under Rule 29A | As provided in those rules; optional for Section 20 purposes in many cases | Revising authority or the President |
| APAR grading or remarks | Representation under DoPT APAR instructions | Short window from communication, generally 15 days | The competent authority one level above the reviewing officer |
| Tentative seniority list | Objection | The date fixed in the circular | The authority who circulated the list |
| Pay fixation, MACP, increments, allowances | Representation | No fixed period, but delay limits arrears | Head of office or the cadre controlling authority |
| Pension, gratuity, family pension | Representation, with grievance portal entry | No fixed period; file early | Head of office, then the head of department |
| Transfer | Representation under the transfer policy | Usually within a short period after the order | The authority named in the policy |
| Recruitment result or rejection | Representation if the notice provides for it | Often a few days to a few weeks | The recruiting body's regional office |
When the tribunal will hear you without waiting
The departmental route is not required where it would be useless or where waiting would defeat the purpose. Common examples: a transfer or relieving order with immediate effect where the policy itself is being ignored; a recovery from salary or pension that has already started; a termination or discharge with no appeal provided; an order passed by the highest authority itself, so that there is nobody above to appeal to; a policy decision by the ministry that no subordinate officer can change; and an order passed without jurisdiction or in plain breach of natural justice.
Even in these cases, it is wise to send a short representation the same day and mention it in the OA. It shows good faith and it often takes the steam out of the department's objection. Explain in the OA, in a separate paragraph, why the remedy is either not available or not effective. The tribunal is more willing to waive Section 20 when the applicant has addressed it squarely than when he has ignored it.
If you need an urgent interim order, read interim relief under Section 24. And if the problem is a salary recovery that has already begun, see getting a salary recovery stopped.
A made-up example: the teacher who skipped the appeal
Here's a made-up example. Sunita, a TGT in a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Ranchi, gets a penalty of withholding of one increment without cumulative effect under Rule 16. Angry, she files an OA at the Patna Bench, which covers Jharkhand, a week later. The department's counsel points out that an appeal lay to the appellate authority under Rule 23 and had not been filed.
The tribunal disposes of the OA at the admission stage, giving her liberty to appeal within a fixed period and saying the appeal will be decided on merits without objection of delay. She loses about two months and pays twice for drafting. Had she appealed first, with the same points, she would either have got relief or come back to the tribunal with a stronger record and an appellate order to attack.
The lesson is not that the tribunal is unhelpful. It is that against a penalty, the appeal is the remedy the rules give, and the tribunal will almost always want it used. See appealing a penalty order within 45 days.
Writing the representation, step by step
A representation that works is short, specific and complete. Here is the order we follow.
Identify the right authority
Find out who is competent to grant what you want. For a penalty, the appellate authority. For pay fixation, usually the head of office or the cadre controlling authority. Writing to a minister, a secretary who has no role, or a grievance cell alone does not usually count.
Route it through proper channel
The DoPT OM of 6 June 2013 asks employees to send representations through proper channel to the lowest competent authority. Bypassing the channel can be treated as misconduct under the conduct rules. You may send an advance copy to the deciding authority where the rules permit; for an appeal, send a copy to the authority whose order you are appealing.
Put the facts in date order
One paragraph per event: appointment, the order complained of, what changed and when. Give file numbers and dates. The deciding officer often has only your letter in front of him.
State the rule and the reason
Name the rule, OM or judgment that supports you and say in one or two sentences why it applies. Attach the OM if it is not well known. Do not paste ten judgments; one on point is enough.
Ask for a clear relief
Say exactly what you want: refixation of pay at a stated level from a stated date, quashing of the penalty, correction of seniority to a stated position, release of arrears with interest. A vague 'kindly do the needful' cannot be granted.
Keep proof of delivery and diarise six months
Get a dated acknowledgement or send by speed post and keep the tracking record. Note the date six months later. That is when the tribunal's door opens if there is no reply, and it is also when your one-year limitation under Section 21(1)(b) starts.
Advocate B.K. Singh usually reads the representation before he reads anything else in a client's file. If it is unclear what was asked and on what basis, the OA has to do extra work to fix that, and sometimes the better course is a fresh, focused representation before filing.
What a good representation contains, and what it leaves out
- A subject line that states the relief. 'Representation for refixation of pay on MACP from 1.7.2024' is better than 'Grievance regarding injustice'.
- Your identity and service details. Name, designation, office, employee or PPO number, date of appointment.
- The order complained of. Number, date and authority, with a copy attached.
- Facts in date order. Numbered paragraphs, no adjectives.
- The rule and how it applies. One or two rules or OMs, quoted briefly.
- The relief. Precise, with dates and figures if possible.
- A request for a reasoned decision. Ask for a speaking order so that any refusal can be examined.
- Left out: allegations against named officers unless essential and supported, threats to go to court, long quotations from judgments, and personal hardship pages that bury the legal point. Hardship can be mentioned in one paragraph.
How the remedy changes for Group A officers, railway, postal and defence civilian staff
Who hears your appeal depends on who passed the order and on the schedule to your service rules. For most Group C staff in a ministry or attached office, the appellate authority is the officer one level above the disciplinary authority, and the schedule or the penalty order itself names him. Postal staff usually appeal from a divisional head to the regional or circle Director; the appeal goes up the postal hierarchy, not to the Directorate in Delhi unless the order came from a circle head.
Railway employees work under the Railway Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1968, with their own schedules of disciplinary and appellate authorities for each category, and a 45-day appeal period. Running staff, workshop staff and ministerial staff can have different appellate authorities in the same division, so check the schedule rather than assuming. Civilians in defence units, such as storekeepers in an ordnance depot or clerks in a MES office, follow the CCS (CCA) Rules with Ministry of Defence schedules; their appeal does not go through the military chain of command.
Group A officers are a special case. Where the President is the disciplinary authority, as for many Group A services, there is no appeal at all. The officer may seek review under Rule 29A, but Section 20 does not force him to, and he can usually go to the tribunal directly against the President's order. Where the order is passed by an authority subordinate to the President, an appeal lies as usual.
If you cannot find out who the appellate authority is, address the appeal to the authority named in the order or one level above the officer who signed it, and say in the covering letter that it should be placed before the competent appellate authority. A wrongly addressed appeal sent in time is far better than a correctly addressed one sent late.
The trap of the 'decide the representation' order
Tribunals often dispose of OAs at the first hearing by directing the department to decide the applicant's representation within a fixed period, without going into merits. For a live grievance this is useful. For an old one, it can be a trap.
The Supreme Court in C. Jacob v. Director of Geology and Mining (2008) and Union of India v. M.K. Sarkar (2010) warned that when a stale claim is revived by a fresh representation and the tribunal directs it to be decided, the decision rejecting it does not create a new cause of action. If your claim was already time-barred before the fresh representation, it remains so. The department will say exactly this when you come back, and the tribunal will listen.
So if your grievance is several years old, do not rely on a new representation to cure delay. File the OA with an application for condonation of delay explaining the gap honestly. Our page on filing late with a Section 21 application explains what counts as sufficient cause. For pay and pension, which are continuing claims, delay usually limits arrears rather than barring the claim, but that limit is itself under debate for pensions in 2026.
Pensioners, family pensioners and candidates
Retired employees often do not know whom to write to, because the office they served in may have been restructured. The general route is the head of office who forwarded the pension papers, then the head of department, with a copy to the Pay and Accounts Office or pension sanctioning authority. Register the grievance on CPENGRAMS too; it creates a dated record and, under DARPG's 2024 guidelines, a target time for a reply. But a grievance portal entry is not the statutory remedy itself, so send a proper written representation as well. Our page on pension, PPO or gratuity not released sets out the pension side.
Widows and children claiming family pension should write to the head of office of the deceased employee, attaching the death certificate and the family details form. If there is no reply within six months, the tribunal can be approached.
Candidates in recruitment rarely have a departmental appeal. Some notices allow a representation against provisional answer keys or rejection within a few days; use that window, because a challenge to something you could have objected to at the time is weaker. Otherwise a candidate may approach the tribunal directly against a final rejection, quickly, before the selection is completed.
A made-up example: the MACP letter that set the clock
Here's a made-up example. Joseph, a Postal Assistant in Guwahati, completes 20 years of service in March 2025 and is denied the second MACP because one APAR in the five years was 'Good' instead of 'Very Good'. That APAR was never communicated to him. On 10 May 2025 he writes to the Senior Superintendent of Post Offices through his postmaster, asking that the APAR be communicated, that he be allowed to represent against it, and that his MACP be considered afresh, citing Dev Dutt and the DoPT instructions on communication of APARs.
No reply comes. On 10 November 2025 the six months run out, and from that date he has one year, until about 10 November 2026, to file an OA under Section 21(1)(b). He does not need to write again. If he does write again in March 2026, that letter will not extend the year. He files at the Guwahati Bench in September 2026, with the May 2025 representation and the speed post receipt as annexures. The department cannot argue that he skipped Section 20, and it cannot argue limitation.
Our page on APARs graded below benchmark deals with the substance of a claim like his.
Papers to keep from the departmental stage
- The order you are aggrieved by, with the date you received it
- Your representation or appeal, signed and dated
- Proof of submission: diary number, acknowledgement or speed post receipt with tracking
- Any forwarding letter from your office showing it went through proper channel
- Reminders, if any, with dates
- The reply or final order, and the envelope or e-mail showing when it reached you
- Grievance portal registration number and status page
- The rules, OMs and circulars you relied on
- RTI requests and replies on the status of your representation
What happens to your pending appeal once the OA is admitted
Section 19(4) says that once an application is admitted, any proceeding under the service rules for redressal of the same grievance that is pending immediately before admission abates, unless the tribunal permits otherwise. In plain words: if your appeal is still pending when the tribunal admits your OA, the department may stop processing it.
This is one more reason to think before filing early. If your appeal has a fair chance of success and the six months are nearly up, it may be better to wait a few weeks than to have it abate. If the appeal is going nowhere and the department is using it to delay, admission of the OA moves the dispute to a forum that will decide it.
Also remember that an OA must challenge the right order. Once an appellate order is passed, it is the appellate order, along with the original order, that must be challenged. Annex both.
Where your OA will be filed after the departmental stage
The representation is usually decided at a regional or headquarters office, and that location can affect where your OA may be filed. Under the CAT (Procedure) Rules, you may ordinarily file before the bench for the place where you are posted, or where the cause of action arose in whole or in part. A Group C employee in Bhopal whose appeal was rejected by an appellate authority in New Delhi can usually choose between the Jabalpur Bench, which covers Madhya Pradesh, and the Principal Bench. A pensioner may file where he ordinarily lives.
Choose the bench that is practical for you to attend and where the record is. Splitting the departmental and tribunal stages between distant cities is not wrong, but it adds travel and counsel coordination. Our page on preparing and filing an OA under Section 19 explains the filing itself.
The departmental stage and the tribunal stage: time and cost
| Stage | Time | What you spend |
|---|---|---|
| Drafting and sending the representation or appeal | A few days; within the rule's time limit for appeals | Speed post and photocopies |
| Waiting for a decision | Up to six months under Section 20(2)(b); earlier action only for urgent cases | Nothing |
| Limitation for the OA | One year from rejection, or one year from the end of the six months | Not applicable |
| Filing the OA | One to three weeks once papers are complete | A small fixed CAT fee (Rs 50 under Rule 7 of the CAT (Procedure) Rules; ask the registry for the current amount and mode) |
| Hearing and decision | Months to a couple of years, depending on bench and complexity; some OAs end at admission with a direction to decide the representation | Lawyer's fee stage by stage, agreed in writing at the first meeting |
Mistakes we see at the departmental stage
- Writing to everyone except the competent authority. Letters to the Prime Minister's grievance cell, an MP and the department's minister do not replace the representation the rules require.
- Missing the 45-day appeal window. An appeal filed late needs a request for condonation, and the appellate authority may refuse. Get it in on time even if it is short.
- Sending the same letter for years. After S.S. Rathore, repeated letters do not extend limitation. One proper representation, then the tribunal.
- Relying on someone else's letter. A union's letter or a colleague's successful representation does not stop your own limitation running. Put your own claim on record.
- Raising new points only in the OA. Put your main arguments to the department first.
- Not keeping proof of delivery. A representation the department says it never received is hard to rely on.
- Abusive or threatening language. It can lead to a conduct charge and distracts from the merits. See our guide to the first seven days after an adverse order for a calmer approach.
Help with your representation or appeal
We draft representations and appeals for central employees and pensioners at the departmental stage, and where needed take the matter to the tribunal at the right time. Advocate B.K. Singh often advises clients to spend as much care on the appeal as on the OA, because a good appeal either ends the dispute or gives the tribunal a clean record. What we charge for each stage is explained at the first meeting and then confirmed in writing.
If you are about to write a representation or appeal, or one is pending without reply, get in touch with Advocate B.K. Singh for advice on your papers or for updates on the law.
Frequently asked questions
Is it compulsory to file a departmental appeal before going to CAT?
Ordinarily yes, if the service rules provide one, such as an appeal against a penalty under Rule 23. The tribunal can waive it in suitable cases, like urgent recovery or orders without jurisdiction. If you skip it, explain why in the OA.
How long do I wait after sending a representation before filing in CAT?
Six months from the date you submitted it, if no decision comes. After that you can file even though the representation is pending. You then have one year to file.
Do repeated reminders extend the time for filing in CAT?
No. The Supreme Court in S.S. Rathore held that repeated representations not provided by the rules do not extend limitation. Your clock runs from the first proper remedy.
Does a complaint on CPGRAMS or CPENGRAMS count as a representation?
It is useful as a dated record but is not the statutory remedy under the service rules. Send a written representation to the competent authority through proper channel as well. Mention the portal number in it.
Can I send my representation directly to the Secretary of the ministry?
The DoPT OM of 6 June 2013 asks employees to go through proper channel to the lowest competent authority. Bypassing the channel can be treated as misconduct. An advance copy to the deciding authority is allowed in some cases.
My OA was disposed of with a direction to decide my representation. What now?
Wait for the decision within the time the tribunal fixed. If it is rejected, you can file a fresh OA against that order. But if your claim was already stale, the rejection may not give you a fresh start on limitation.
Do I have to write to the President before filing an OA?
No. Section 20(3) says a memorial to the President is not a remedy you must use unless you choose to file one. If you do file it, the tribunal may expect you to wait for its result.
What happens to my pending appeal if CAT admits my OA?
Under Section 19(4), departmental proceedings on the same grievance pending at admission generally abate unless the tribunal says otherwise. So decide whether to wait for the appeal or to file before the six months are up.