Evidence Checklist: What to Collect Before Your Service Dispute Grows

Start on the day of the first warning sign

Most service cases do not begin with a dismissal order. They begin with something small: a memo asking you to explain an absence, a pay slip with a new deduction code, a transfer list that leaves out your name for the third time, an APAR grading below benchmark that appears in your disclosure. That is the moment to start keeping papers, not the day a lawyer asks for them.

By the time a dispute reaches the Tribunal, the officer who gave you the oral instruction may have been transferred, the WhatsApp group may have been deleted, the Speed Post tracking page may no longer load, and you may have changed phones twice. We regularly see employees with a strong case and a thin file, and it is the thin file that makes the case hard.

You do not need to treat every memo as a war. You only need to keep everything, in one place, with dates. If the matter settles at the departmental stage, you have lost nothing but a few evenings.

Documents for a service dispute: the core set

Orders and letters: why the envelope matters

The limitation period under Section 21 of the Administrative Tribunals Act runs from the final order, and in practice the question of when the order was communicated to you comes up often. An order dated 3 March that reached you on 28 April gives you nearly two months of difference. The envelope with its postmark, or the receipt register entry where you signed for it, is how you show that. Write the date of receipt on the back of your copy in pencil, and keep the envelope stapled to it.

If an order is handed to you in person and you are asked to sign the office copy, sign with the date and the words 'received' or 'received under protest'. Do not write 'accepted' or 'agreed'. That one word has been used against employees who later challenged recoveries and pay fixation.

Read the 'copy to' list at the foot of every order. It tells you which offices know about the decision and therefore which ones to name as respondents and where to send RTI applications later. It also shows whether the order was approved by the right authority, which can matter in discipline cases.

Look at the signature block as well. An order signed 'for' a higher officer, or issued 'with the approval of the competent authority' without naming who that is, may need the approval note behind it. You will not get that note just by asking the section, but you can ask for it later under RTI, and your copy of the order is what tells you to ask. If you receive only a photocopy or an unsigned order, keep it anyway and ask in writing for a signed copy.

Proof of representation: the paper most files are missing

Section 20 of the Act expects you to use the departmental remedy first, and treats it as exhausted if your appeal or representation is not decided within six months. Six months from when? From the date you made it. If you cannot prove that date, the department can say it never received your letter, and you lose either time or credibility.

The simplest proof is a diary or dak number given by the receipt section on your copy. Speed Post with a printed receipt is the next best, and you should save a PDF of the tracking page showing delivery, because tracking pages do not stay online forever. An email from your official NIC or department ID to the competent authority, with the letter attached, is good proof too. A representation sent through proper channel should be handed to your controlling officer with a request to forward it, and you should ask for the forwarding letter number.

Grievances registered on CPGRAMS have a registration number and a status history. Download that history; the portal is useful proof that you raised the issue, though a CPGRAMS complaint is not a substitute for a statutory appeal. Our guide on CPGRAMS or a Tribunal case explains why the two serve different purposes.

Where each document comes from and how long it usually takes

Emails, WhatsApp and attendance data

A lot of service life now happens on phones. Instructions to stay back, permission to leave the station, approval for leave, and sometimes threats, arrive on WhatsApp. Screenshots are better than nothing, but they are easy to dispute. Export the full chat from the app, keep it on a pen drive or in your own email, and make sure the phone number of the sender is visible somewhere in the record.

For emails, print or save the message with full headers, not just the text. If the email came to your official ID, do not forward bulk office correspondence to a personal account; save only what concerns you and what you would be entitled to receive anyway. Government email policy restricts moving official mail out of the system, and you do not want to hand the department a fresh point against you.

The Tribunal decides most cases on documents and affidavits, and Section 22 of the Act lets it follow its own procedure guided by natural justice rather than the Code of Civil Procedure. Still, if an electronic record ever goes before a court, Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, which replaced Section 65B of the old Evidence Act, requires a certificate about the device and the record. Keep the phone or laptop the record came from, and note its make and number, so a certificate can be given later.

Biometric attendance data is valuable in absence and late-coming cases. Most central offices use an Aadhaar-based attendance system, and employees can usually see their own punch record. Download your record for the period in question before it is archived.

What you should not collect

Rule 11 of the CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964 bars a government servant from communicating any official document or information to anyone not authorised to receive it. Photographing a file left on someone's table, taking home an original register, or getting a friend in the section to slip you a copy of a colleague's APAR can turn a good pay dispute into a disciplinary case against you. It also gives the department an easy argument that your papers cannot be relied on.

Get official records the proper way: by inspection of your own service book and personal file, by asking the section in writing, or by RTI. Our guides on getting a copy of your service book and personal file and on RTI for DPC minutes, APARs and inquiry files explain those routes.

Secret recordings of senior officers are a grey area. They can sometimes help in a harassment complaint, but they can also be treated as unbecoming conduct and their use may be contested. Do not record as a habit. If you think you need to, take advice first.

Record keeping for employees: a routine that takes one evening a week

This is not about building a lawyer's file. It is a habit that stops papers going missing while the dispute is still small.

1. Start a dated diary

   Use a plain notebook or a single document on your phone. Each entry gets the date, place, who was present and what was said or handed over. Write it the same day.

2. Scan or photograph every paper the day you get it

   Use a free scanning app and name each file with the date first, then a few words: 2026-08-14 memo unauthorised absence. Date-first names sort themselves into order.

3. Keep originals untouched

   Do not underline, staple notes on, or write remarks on the original. Make a photocopy for your own marking.

4. Back up in two places

   A pen drive at home and your personal email or cloud storage. Phones get lost, and office computers are not yours.

5. Update a one-page list of dates

   Each time something happens, add a line: date, event, document. This list becomes the spine of any representation or OA.

6. Check once a month what is still missing

   Note any paper you know exists but do not have, and decide how to ask for it: a written request, an RTI or an inspection.

If the dispute grows into a case, our guide on organising your service case folder before meeting a lawyer shows how to arrange what you have collected.

What Advocate B.K. Singh asks for first

When a new matter comes in, Advocate B.K. Singh asks for two papers before anything else: the order being challenged with proof of the date it reached the employee, and the last representation with proof of the date it was submitted. Those two dates decide whether Section 20 has been satisfied and how much time is left under Section 21. A file can have two hundred pages and still lack both.

His practical tip is to keep these two papers on top of the folder in a separate plastic sleeve, with the proofs of date stapled behind them. When you meet a lawyer, a union representative or the grievance officer, you can show the heart of the dispute in a minute. Everything else in the folder supports those two papers.

Different service case papers for different disputes

• Discipline. The memorandum of charges with its annexures, the list of documents and witnesses, your written statement of defence, daily order sheets of the inquiry, the inquiry report and your representation on it.
• Unauthorised absence. Leave applications and their proof of submission, medical certificates, biometric punch records, and any message granting or refusing permission. Our page on unauthorised absence charges explains how these are used.
• Pay, recovery and allowances. Pay fixation statement, the option form you signed, any undertaking, pay slips before and after, and the recovery order with its calculation.
• Promotion, MACP and APAR. Seniority list, DPC panel, the APAR disclosure letter and your representation, promotion orders of juniors, and the recruitment rules in force for the vacancy year.
• Transfer. The transfer order, the department's transfer policy, your request or hardship application, medical papers of family members, and your spouse's posting order if you rely on the spouse posting guidelines.
• Pension. PPO, pension slip, Form 4 or family details, the service book pages on qualifying service, and letters from the PAO or bank.
• Candidates. Advertisement, application form printout, fee receipt, admit card, result PDF, document verification slip, the rejection letter, and the dates on which your caste or EWS certificate was issued.

Railway, postal and defence civilian staff: the extra papers

Railway employees have records that do not exist elsewhere. If you are running staff, keep your duty rosters, running allowance statements and kilometre records, because the pay element of running allowance feeds into pension and pay fixation. For a medical decategorisation dispute, keep the medical board papers and the alternative appointment offers. A charge under the Railway Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules usually comes on a standard form, SF-5 for major penalty and SF-11 for minor, and the form's annexures are the documents for a service dispute of that kind.

Postal staff should keep the divisional office's letters on postings and departmental examinations, and the result sheets of any examination they appeared in. A Gramin Dak Sevak's key papers are the engagement order, the TRCA slab orders and any put-off duty order with its date, since put-off periods and ex gratia payments are worked out from those dates.

Civilians working in Army, Navy and Air Force units should note which authority issued each order: the unit, the command headquarters or the controller of defence accounts. When a unit moves, letters can go astray, so keep the unit's postal address and the PCDA or CDA reference numbers on your pay slips. Group A officers should add the cadre controlling authority's orders and any empanelment or deputation correspondence. Whatever your cadre, the test is the same: could a stranger understand what happened to you, and when, from your papers alone?

Witnesses: write down names, do not collect statements

If colleagues saw what happened, note their names, posts and where they are now posted. Do not go around asking them to sign statements or affidavits at an early stage. It puts them in an awkward position with the same officers you are complaining about, and it can be described as canvassing or influencing witnesses if a departmental inquiry follows.

In a Rule 14 inquiry you can ask for defence witnesses to be called, and the inquiry officer decides on relevance. In a Tribunal case, affidavits are filed when the pleadings call for them. At this stage your list of names is enough. Keep it in the diary, not on an office computer.

Retired colleagues are often freer to help. If a retired section officer remembers how a seniority list was actually prepared, note that too, with a phone number.

Retirees, families and candidates: papers that are easy to lose

A retiree's most important papers are the PPO, the pension calculation sheet, the last pay certificate, and every letter from the PAO or the pension disbursing bank. Keep the bank passbook pages showing pension credits, because they show exactly when a cut or recovery began. If your pension was reduced, the date of the first reduced credit is often the date that matters. Ask the bank for the letter or authority on which it acted; banks are usually willing to give a copy of the PAO's instruction to the pensioner concerned.

Families of an employee who died in service should keep the death certificate, the Form 4 or family details submitted by the employee, the nomination forms, and any letter from the office asking for documents. Even an informal letter listing papers 'required for processing' is proof of the date the claim was raised.

Candidates should keep printouts, not just screenshots, of the advertisement, the online application, the fee payment, the admit card and the result. Recruitment websites are taken down or replaced within months. Save the PDF of the advertisement the day you apply; it fixes the cut-off dates and eligibility conditions that later decide most candidate disputes.

This week's checklist

• Put every order and letter received in the last two years in one folder, newest on top.
• Find the envelopes or receipt entries for the most recent adverse order and write the date of receipt on your copy.
• For every representation you sent, find the diary number, Speed Post receipt or email; if one is missing, send a short reminder now and keep proof of that.
• Export WhatsApp chats and save emails that relate to the dispute.
• Download pay slips for six months before and after the problem began.
• Start the dated diary and the one-page list of dates.
• List any official record you need but do not have, and send a written request or RTI for it.
• Read our guide on the first seven days after an adverse order if an order has already been passed.

When the papers are ready

Once the core set is together, you can see the dispute clearly: what was decided, when you got it, what you said in reply, and what rule or comparison shows the decision is wrong. That is also what goes into an Original Application, and our page on preparing and filing your OA under Section 19 shows how those papers are turned into a petition. Keep an eye on the time limit too; our guide on when the one-year clock starts explains how it runs.

Advocate B.K. Singh's second tip is simple: never hand your only original to anyone, including your own office. Give copies, offer to show the original, and get a receipt for anything you do hand over. Papers given 'for verification' have a way of disappearing, and with them the strongest part of your case.

If you are unsure whether you have the right papers, or what to do with them, look at the steps for starting a case before the Tribunal and then contact Advocate B.K. Singh for advice on your papers or for updates on the law.