Filing RTI for DPC Minutes, APARs and Inquiry Files: What You Get and What Is Refused

Why RTI is worth Rs 10 in a service dispute

Most service disputes are lost because the employee is arguing in the dark. You know a junior got promoted. You do not know which five APARs the DPC read, what grade it gave each year, or whether one of your reports was simply missing. Once those pages are in your hand, the dispute becomes specific: 'the 2021-22 APAR graded Good was never communicated to me' is a claim a tribunal can act on, while 'I have been treated unfairly' is not.

The Right to Information Act, 2005 lets any citizen, including a serving or retired government servant, ask a public authority for recorded information. You write to the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the office that holds the file. Under Section 7 the CPIO must supply the information or refuse with reasons within 30 days. The fee for central public authorities is Rs 10 under the RTI Rules, 2012, plus Rs 2 a page for photocopies.

RTI is not a remedy in itself. It will not reverse a DPC decision or quash a penalty. What it does is give you the record, so that your representation, appeal or Original Application can point to the page, the date and the officer who got it wrong. It is also the cheapest step in the whole process, and you can take it on your own.

Record by record: what usually comes and what is usually refused

Your own APAR copy: the easiest request to win

An RTI APAR copy request for your own reports is the one most likely to succeed. Since the reporting year 2008-09, the full APAR, including the grading, is meant to be shown to the officer reported upon, who gets a chance to represent. The Supreme Court in Dev Dutt v. Union of India (2008) and Sukhdev Singh v. Union of India (2013) treated non-communication of an entry that hurts your chances as unfair. So the information is already yours in principle, and the CPIO has little ground to refuse it.

The trouble is usually with older years and with missing reports. A CPIO may reply that the APAR for 2014-15 'is not available'. Do not let that reply slide. A missing APAR is itself a fact that matters, because the DPC must follow a set procedure when a report is not on record. Our guide on what the DPC does with missing APARs explains that procedure.

Ask for every page: the self-appraisal, the reporting officer's remarks, the reviewing officer's remarks, the accepting authority's endorsement, the numerical grade and the date on which each part was signed. Dates matter more than people expect. A reviewing officer who wrote the report a year after retiring, or after the officer had moved on, can be a point in your favour.

If the copy shows a grade below the benchmark that you never saw, the next step is a representation within the time the DoPT instructions allow, and then a case if that fails. Our page on APARs graded below benchmark and never shown to you sets out how that dispute runs.

RTI for DPC minutes: how to avoid an automatic refusal

An RTI for DPC minutes works best when it is filed after the panel has been approved and the promotion orders have been issued. Before that, most CPIOs refuse on the ground that the selection process is not complete, and the Information Commissions have generally accepted that while the process is live.

Once the orders are out, the minutes themselves are usually supplied, but the parts that show other officers' gradings are often masked. That is lawful under Section 10, which allows the CPIO to give the part of a record that is not exempt after severing the part that is. A reply that says 'DPC minutes contain third party information, hence denied' without considering severance is a weak reply and worth appealing.

Ask for things the DPC must have recorded about you. Write the questions so that they are about you: the years whose APARs were considered for you, the grading the DPC assigned to you for each year, the benchmark applied, whether you were within the zone of consideration, and whether any sealed cover was kept. These are your own details, and refusing them as 'personal information of a third party' makes no sense.

If you want to understand how the committee arrives at an overall grade from five reports, read how a DPC reads your last five APARs before you draft the RTI. It will tell you which documents to name.

Inquiry file RTI: before and after the final order

An inquiry file RTI request has two very different answers depending on when you send it. After the disciplinary authority has passed its final order, the file is a closed record, and the charged officer is usually entitled to the whole of it: the charge memo approval note, the inquiry officer's appointment order, the daily order sheets, the inquiry report, the disagreement note if any, the advice of the CVC or UPSC, and the note sheets leading up to the penalty.

Note sheets are the most useful part and the part CPIOs most often leave out. Ask for them by name. They show who proposed the charge, whether the competent authority actually approved the charge memo, and whether the disciplinary authority applied its own mind or merely signed a draft prepared by the vigilance section. The Supreme Court in Union of India v. B.V. Gopinath (2014) held that a charge memo not approved by the competent disciplinary authority was not validly issued, and the note sheets are where that approval is, or is not, recorded.

While the inquiry is still going on, the CPIO may refuse under Section 8(1)(h), which protects information that would impede an investigation or prosecution. That exemption is meant for live investigations and is often overstated. But in a pending inquiry RTI is the slower tool anyway. Rule 14 of the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965 gives you the right to inspect listed documents and to ask for additional documents through the inquiry officer. Our guides on inspecting listed documents and asking for additional documents deal with that route.

Retired employees facing proceedings under Rule 8 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 can use the same approach: inspection inside the proceeding, RTI once the order is passed.

The Section 8 exemptions you will see quoted, and what they really cover

Third party information: why your colleague's grading is harder to get

Most refusals in promotion cases arise because the employee wants to compare. 'Why did Sharma get Very Good when I got Good?' That question needs Sharma's APARs, and those are third party information. In Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner (2012), the Supreme Court treated an employee's service record, show cause notices and penalties as personal information. In R.K. Jain v. Union of India (2013) it applied the same view to an officer's APARs. Expect a refusal.

If the CPIO thinks the information might be given, Section 11 requires notice to the third party within 5 days, gives that person 10 days to object, and allows the CPIO up to 40 days in all to decide. This is why some applications seem to vanish for six weeks. The colleague is being asked, and colleagues almost always object.

So an RTI for DPC minutes will rarely give you a full side-by-side comparison. There is a better route. A tribunal deciding your Original Application can call for the DPC file and the comparative gradings, look at them itself, and decide whether you were treated unequally. The department cannot refuse the tribunal on privacy grounds. So when comparison is the heart of your case, use RTI to get your own papers and leave the comparison to the tribunal.

How to file the application so it gets a proper answer

These steps are for central public authorities. Staff of state bodies use the state's RTI portal and rules.

1. Find the office that holds the file

   APARs are usually kept by the cadre controlling authority, DPC files by the establishment or personnel section, and inquiry files by the disciplinary authority's office or vigilance section. If you are unsure, address the CPIO of the office that issued the order you are unhappy with. Section 6(3) obliges a CPIO to transfer the request within 5 days if the file is elsewhere.

2. Write short, numbered requests

   Number each item and name the document: 'Copy of my APAR for 2019-20 with all remarks and dates of signature'. Avoid questions that start with 'why'. The CPIO supplies records, not explanations, and 'why' questions invite a reply that no information is held.

3. Pay the fee and keep proof

   File online on the central RTI portal, rtionline.gov.in, for most central ministries and their offices, or send a postal application with an Indian Postal Order or other permitted mode for Rs 10. Keep the registration number or the speed post receipt with the tracking print.

4. Diary the 30th day

   Count 30 days from receipt by the CPIO (48 hours applies only where life or liberty is involved). If third party notice is issued, the limit stretches to 40 days. Silence after that is a deemed refusal.

5. File the first appeal within 30 days

   Under Section 19(1), appeal to the First Appellate Authority, an officer senior to the CPIO, within 30 days of the reply or of the deemed refusal. Quote the exact refusal and explain in two or three lines why the information is your own or why severance was possible. The appellate authority should decide within 30 days, extendable to 45.

6. Go to the Information Commission if needed

   A second appeal lies to the Central Information Commission within 90 days of the first appeal decision under Section 19(3). Hearings are often online. The Commission can order disclosure and, in a fit case, impose a penalty on the CPIO under Section 20.

Do not write to the CPIO about the merits of your promotion. Keep the RTI and the grievance in separate envelopes. A request mixed with complaints usually gets a reply to neither.

Your RTI checklist before you post or submit it

• Correct public authority and CPIO address, or the right ministry on the online portal
• Each document named separately, with the year or file number where you know it
• Your own APARs requested year by year, including reviewing and accepting remarks and signature dates
• DPC request limited to your own grading, the benchmark, the zone of consideration and minutes 'with third party details severed'
• Note sheets asked for by name in any inquiry file or penalty file
• Fee of Rs 10 paid and proof kept; BPL certificate attached if you claim exemption
• A copy of the application with the date of dispatch and tracking print in your folder
• A calendar note for day 30, day 40 (if third party notice), and the last day for the first appeal
• A separate calendar note for your service limitation, which RTI does not stop

How long it takes and what it costs

Two habits Advocate B.K. Singh asks every client to follow

The first: send the RTI and the representation in the same week. Advocate B.K. Singh sees many employees who wait four months for an RTI reply, then another two for the first appeal, and only then write to the department. By then half the limitation period has gone, and the Supreme Court held in S.S. Rathore v. State of M.P. (1989) that repeated representations do not extend time. The representation can say plainly that RTI papers have been sought and that you will add to it when they arrive.

The second: always ask for the note sheets and the dates of signature, not just the final document. In his experience the decisive point in an APAR or penalty case is often a date, such as a reviewing officer who signed after leaving the post, or a charge memo approved by an officer below the disciplinary authority, and that point sits on the note sheet rather than on the order you were given.

One more practical point. Keep the RTI replies in their envelopes or print the portal reply with the date showing. If the tribunal later asks when you first learnt of an adverse grading, that date may decide whether your claim is in time. Our guide on when the one-year clock starts explains why.

When RTI is the wrong tool

RTI is slow when the clock is short. If you have just received a charge memo and have 15 days to file your written statement of defence, an RTI reply will not arrive in time. Ask the disciplinary authority for copies of the listed documents and for time, under Rule 14 itself.

RTI is also the wrong tool once your case is in the tribunal. The tribunal can direct the department to produce the DPC file or the inquiry file, and the department must comply. Filing RTI applications in parallel, and then complaining about the replies in the OA, distracts from the real dispute.

Finally, RTI cannot be used to force a decision. Asking 'what action has been taken on my representation dated 12 January' gets you a status line, not a decision. If the department is sitting on your grievance, the remedy is a reminder and then, after six months, a case. Our page on being left out by the DPC while juniors were promoted explains that sequence.

Where the dispute goes once you have the papers

For most central government employees, the forum is the Central Administrative Tribunal bench with jurisdiction over the place where you are posted or where the order was passed. A Nagpur engineer files at the Mumbai Bench, a postal assistant in Gaya at the Patna Bench, a scientist in a Lucknow CSIR laboratory at the Lucknow Bench. Staff of bodies notified under Section 14(2) of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 also go to CAT.

Not everyone does. CAPF personnel, such as CRPF and BSF staff, go to the High Court, as do employees of public sector undertakings and banks. Members of the armed forces go to the Armed Forces Tribunal, though civilian employees of defence units come to CAT. State government employees go to the State Administrative Tribunal where one exists, or to the High Court.

If the dispute is about a DPC, the OA usually asks for a review DPC after your grading is corrected or after the uncommunicated APAR is ignored, with consequential seniority and arrears. What a promotion case against a DPC decision involves, from the representation to the review DPC, is set out on our service page. Our guide to preparing and filing an OA under Section 19 covers the filing itself.

Railway, postal, defence civilian and retired readers

Railway employees have their own confidential report and selection procedures for non-gazetted posts, but RTI works the same way: the CPIO of the division or zone holds the records. Ask the divisional office for selection proceedings, the panel and your own record, and the zonal office for gazetted selections.

Postal staff, including Gramin Dak Sevaks, can seek their own records from the divisional office. GDS do not have APARs in the same form as departmental staff, but put-off duty orders, inquiry files and engagement records can all be asked for.

Defence civilian staff in units under the Army, Navy and Air Force use RTI through the CPIO of the controlling headquarters. Some defence organisations are in the Second Schedule, and a refusal under Section 24 is common there, but allegations of corruption and human rights violations are outside that exclusion.

Retired employees often need old records, sometimes twenty years old, to fix qualifying service or a pension cut. Ask for your service book and personal file first; our guide on getting a copy of your service book and personal file shows how. Candidates who were rejected in SSC or UPSC recruitment can ask for their own marks and evaluation records, though answer sheets of others are refused.

What to do this week

Write down the one decision you want to challenge and the date you received it. Then draft one RTI with no more than six numbered items, all about your own records, and send it. In the same week, write a short representation to the competent authority through proper channel, saying what you want and that RTI papers have been sought.

When the reply comes, read it against your list. Mark what was supplied, what was refused and on what ground, and what was simply ignored. Anything refused or ignored goes into the first appeal within 30 days.

If you want someone to read the APARs, DPC minutes or inquiry papers with you and tell you whether there is a case worth filing, contact Advocate B.K. Singh for advice on your papers, in person at Dwarka or Vaishali or online from anywhere in India.