How-To · Service Matters · Last verified October 2026

How to File a Case in the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) (2026)

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

If you are a central government employee and a decision on your service, say a promotion refused, a wrong seniority, a transfer, a pay fixation or a penalty, is unfair or against the rules, the forum to challenge it is usually the Central Administrative Tribunal, not the ordinary civil court and not, in the first place, the High Court. The Tribunal was created to decide exactly these service matters quickly and cheaply. This guide explains who can file in the CAT, what it hears, what you must do before you file, how to file your application step by step, and how a CAT order is challenged if it goes against you. It is general information, not legal advice. Last verified October 2026.

01What the CAT is and what it hears

The Central Administrative Tribunal was set up under the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, which flows from Article 323A of the Constitution. Its job is to decide service disputes of people who serve the Union of India. Under Section 14 of the Act, the CAT has jurisdiction over recruitment and all service matters of central government employees and certain central public bodies.

In plain terms, the kinds of grievances the CAT decides include:

• Recruitment and selection disputes, and non-appointment after selection.
• Promotion, seniority, and pay fixation.
• Transfer and posting.
• Disciplinary action, penalty and dismissal after a departmental inquiry.
• Pension and retirement benefits of central government staff.

The CAT has a Principal Bench at New Delhi and benches in other cities. It does not hear matters of members of the armed forces, officers of the Supreme Court, or the secretarial staff of Parliament, which are outside its scope. State government employees usually go to a State Administrative Tribunal or the High Court instead, which is covered in our explainer on State Administrative Tribunals.

02Who can file, and against whom

A person aggrieved by an order in a service matter within the Tribunal's jurisdiction can file. That is usually a serving or retired central government employee, or someone who applied for a central government post and was affected by a recruitment decision. The case is filed against the government department or authority that passed the order, named through the appropriate officer, for example the Union of India through the relevant Secretary or Head of Department.

You can appear in person or through an advocate. The Tribunal follows the principles of natural justice rather than the strict rules of the Code of Civil Procedure, which is meant to make it quicker and less formal than a civil court.

The CAT exists so a service grievance is decided by a specialist forum, cheaply and quickly, instead of a crowded civil court.

03Before you file: use the departmental remedy first

You usually cannot walk straight into the CAT. Under Section 20 of the Act, the Tribunal will ordinarily not admit an application unless you have first used up the remedies available to you inside the department, such as a statutory appeal or a representation to the authority concerned. This is the single most common reason an application is held up at the start.

So the practical first steps are:

• Identify the order you want to challenge and keep a clean copy of it.
• File the departmental appeal or representation that the service rules provide, and wait for the decision.
• If the department rejects your representation, or does not decide it within a reasonable time (the Act contemplates a wait of about six months on a representation), the cause of action to approach the CAT is complete.

Confirm the exact appeal or representation your service rules require, because the route differs between departments.

04How to file, step by step

A case in the CAT is started by an Original Application under Section 19 of the Act. The broad steps are:

• Draft the Original Application (OA) in the prescribed form. It states your facts, the order you challenge, the grounds, and the relief you seek. Attach the impugned order, your representation and its rejection, the relevant rules, and supporting documents.
• Pay the application fee, which is modest, and attach the proof of payment. The CAT was designed to be low cost, so the fee is small compared with a civil suit.
• File at the bench that has territorial jurisdiction, usually the bench where you are posted or where the cause of action arose. Many filings are now made through the CAT e-filing facility.
• Serve the respondents, so the department can file its reply (counter-reply). You then file a rejoinder if needed.
• Appear for hearing. The Tribunal hears both sides and passes a reasoned order.

If your matter is urgent, for example a transfer taking effect immediately, you can ask for interim relief such as a stay along with the main application. Check the current forms, fee and e-filing steps on the CAT portal before you file, as they are updated from time to time.

05The time limit

Do not delay. Under Section 21 of the Act, an application must generally be filed within one year of the final order you are challenging. Where you made a representation, the one year is usually counted from the date the representation was rejected, or from the expiry of about six months if it was never decided.

The Tribunal can condone a delay if you show good reason, but you should not rely on that. File within the year wherever possible, and if you are already late, be ready to explain the delay with evidence. Confirm the exact limitation that applies to your facts, because the starting point depends on what order and representation you are counting from.

06After you file, and how to appeal a CAT order

After hearing, the CAT passes an order that can allow your application, dismiss it, or send the matter back to the department to decide again correctly. If the order goes against you, the question of where you go next is settled law.

In L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India (1997) 3 SCC 261, the Supreme Court held that decisions of tribunals like the CAT are subject to judicial review by a Division Bench of the High Court within whose jurisdiction the tribunal sits. The Court struck down the part of the Act that had tried to exclude the High Court's writ jurisdiction, and held that this power of judicial review is part of the basic structure of the Constitution. So you ordinarily cannot bypass the High Court and go straight to the Supreme Court against a CAT order.

The practical ladder is therefore: the departmental remedy, then the CAT, then a writ petition before a Division Bench of the High Court, and finally the Supreme Court. Each step has its own time limit, so act promptly at every stage.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

Filing in the CAT is your job and your advocate's job, and Claw does not file for you. Where Claw helps is in running the matter once it exists and in researching how similar service disputes have been decided. You can track your Original Application and any connected proceeding, so a new hearing date, an order, or the department's reply does not slip past you, with alerts and monitoring across the CAT, State Administrative Tribunals, High Courts and other forums, 9,102 courts, benches and forums in all. To see how the CAT, tribunals and courts have treated a point like yours, say the standard for interfering with a penalty or the reading of a particular service rule, its Legal GPT researches across 30 crore+ judgments, with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990. Results return in under 5 seconds, and Claw does not train its AI models on your documents. To check whether a party, an officer or a department has other matters on record, you can run a case search across Indian courts by name. A clean result means nothing was found on the forums and date searched, under the names used, not that no matter exists. This is general information, not legal advice.

08Sources and further reading

• Central Administrative Tribunal (benches, forms, e-filing): cgat.gov.in
• India Code (Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985): indiacode.nic.in
• Department of Personnel and Training (service rules): dopt.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Procedure, forms and fees change, so confirm the current position on the CAT portal and take advice on your own facts before filing.

09Frequently asked questions