In short. If an order has already sanctioned arrears of pay, increment, MACP or a revised fixation and the money has not reached your account, you hold an admitted due, not a fresh claim. This page is for serving employees, retirees and families of employees who have died. A firm written demand to the right desk often moves the file within weeks. If it does not, an Original Application before CAT can seek payment with interest for the delay, usually decided in six months to two years. This week, collect the sanction order and your pay slips, then write to your DDO.
Is this your situation?
- An office order fixed your new pay or granted MACP, but the arrears column in your pay slip still shows nothing.
- You were told the arrear bill is 'with the PAO' or 'under pre-check' for many months.
- A tribunal or departmental order directed arrears, and the office keeps saying funds have not come.
- You retired, your pay was revised later, and the difference in pension, gratuity or leave encashment is still unpaid.
- You were transferred, and each office says the other one must draw your arrears.
- A family member died in service or after retirement with sanctioned arrears still pending.
- You want interest because the money has been held for a year or more without any fault of yours.
Sanctioned but unpaid: why your position is stronger than you think
Most pay disputes begin with an argument about entitlement: whether you deserved the MACP, whether the fixation was right, whether a junior's pay should be matched. Your case is past that point. Once the competent authority has issued an order that fixes your pay at a higher stage, or grants a benefit from a past date, the amount follows from the order and the pay matrix. What is left is a debt the government has admitted and not paid.
That changes how you should write and how a tribunal looks at it. You are not asking the department to reconsider anything. You are asking it to carry out its own decision, and to explain why it has not. Tribunals tend to be impatient with a department that sanctions a benefit and then sits on it, because there is nothing left for the department to decide.
The weak spot is usually not the law but the paperwork. People often cannot say which order sanctioned the arrears, from what date, or how much is due. Fix that first, and the rest of this page becomes much easier to use.
Where sanctioned arrears usually get stuck
- The arrear bill was never prepared. The sanction went into the personal file, but the dealing hand in the cash or bill section did not draw a supplementary bill. Nobody tells you, and the order quietly ages.
- A PAO objection nobody answered. The Pay and Accounts Office returned the bill for a missing undertaking, a pay fixation pro forma or a service book entry. The objection memo sits in a tray, and you hear only that it is 'under process'.
- Treated as an old claim. Arrears covering a long past period can be routed for investigation under the accounting rules before payment, which adds a sanction layer and months of delay.
- Budget head exhausted. The office says there are no funds under the salaries head. That explains a few weeks at the end of a financial year; it does not explain a year.
- Transfer between offices. The sanction was issued at your old station, your last pay certificate went to the new one, and each office treats the arrears as the other's job.
- Retirement in between. The pay revision came after you retired, so it needs a revised pension authority as well as a salary arrear bill, and two sets of clerks wait for each other.
- Data mismatch in e-HRMS or PFMS. The revised pay was never fed into the payroll system, so the system keeps generating salary at the old figure and cannot produce the difference.
Sanction, drawal and payment are three separate acts
A sanction is the decision by the authority competent under the rules: the appointing authority, the head of department, or whoever the delegation of powers names. Drawal is the bill prepared by your Drawing and Disbursing Officer (DDO) for the exact amount. Payment is the Pay and Accounts Office (or the Controller of Defence Accounts, or the railway accounts office) passing that bill and crediting your bank through PFMS or the payroll system.
Your first job is to find out which of these three has not happened. A polite letter that asks 'when will I get my arrears' gets a polite non-answer. A letter that asks 'has the supplementary bill for my arrears under Office Order No. X been prepared, on what date was it sent to the PAO, and has any objection been raised' gets a specific answer, or a refusal that itself becomes evidence.
Advocate B.K. Singh usually asks a client for the bill number before anything else. If there is no bill number, the delay is inside your own office. If there is one, the delay is between your office and accounts, and the letter has to go to both.
The rules and decisions an arrears claim rests on
FR 9(21), Fundamental Rules
FR 9 is the definitions rule of the Fundamental Rules. Clause (21) defines 'pay' as the amount drawn monthly for the post held, including special pay and personal pay. When an order revises your pay from a past date, the difference between what you drew and what clause (21) says you were entitled to draw is the arrear. The definition matters when an office argues that a component is not 'pay' and so need not be drawn in arrears.
Accounting rules on old arrear claims
Central civil accounting rules and the Civil Accounts Manual let a Pay and Accounts Office hold arrear claims covering long past periods for verification before payment. For railway staff, Chapter X of the Indian Railway Establishment Manual, Volume I deals with arrear claims and links the level of sanction needed to how old the claim is. These rules govern procedure. They do not let an office refuse an amount it has already sanctioned; they only explain why a bill may need a further signature.
Sections 19, 20 and 21, Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985
Section 19 lets you file an Original Application against an order or an inaction that affects your service conditions. Section 20 expects you to try the departmental route first, and lets you approach the tribunal if a representation is not decided within six months. Section 21 sets one year as the ordinary limit, with power to condone delay for sufficient cause.
Union of India v. Tarsem Singh (2008) and later decisions
In Tarsem Singh the Supreme Court held that a continuing wrong in pay fixation can be raised late, but arrears are usually confined to about three years before the case is filed. For pay claims tribunals still apply that limit often. For pensions the position has moved: in Maya Banerjee v. Union of India (2026 INSC 959, September 2026) the Supreme Court declined to cut family pension arrears to three years. The law on this point is changing, so check the current position before you assume how far back you can go.
Rule 65, CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021
For gratuity and pension delayed for administrative reasons, Rule 65 gives a specific right to interest, linked to the rate applicable to GPF deposits. There is no equivalent written rule for salary arrears, which is why interest on pay arrears depends on the tribunal's discretion.
Interest on delayed arrears: when tribunals award it
No rule says that a central employee gets interest on salary arrears paid late. Interest comes from the tribunal's power to do justice between the parties, and tribunals use that power when three things line up: the amount was clearly due, the department delayed it without a good reason, and the employee did nothing to cause the delay.
The rate is discretionary. In practice awards are simple interest, often pegged to the GPF rate or a flat figure in the region of six to nine per cent, and the starting point is usually the date the money ought to have been paid or a reasonable period after the sanction, such as three months, to allow for processing. Do not expect compound interest or bank lending rates.
Interest is harder to get where the arrears came out of a court order that fixed its own deadline and the department paid within it, or where the office was waiting on something only you could supply, such as an undertaking, a fixation option or a corrected bank detail. Answer every such letter in writing and keep the receipt; it removes the department's easiest excuse.
Common reasons for delay and how they tend to be viewed
| Reason the office gives | Whose problem it is | Effect on an interest claim |
|---|---|---|
| Arrear bill not prepared after the sanction | The office's own failure | Strong ground for interest |
| PAO objection pending, never shown to you | Shared between office and accounts | Usually counted against the department |
| Your undertaking or fixation option was missing | Yours, if you were asked in writing | Interest likely only from after you supplied it |
| No funds in the budget head | The department's planning | Rarely accepted as a reason for long delay |
| Old claim sent for investigation | Procedural, but time-bound | Reasonable time allowed; delay beyond that counts |
| Dispute over the amount itself | Depends on who is right | Interest follows on the amount found correct |
Getting the sanctioned amount paid: the order of moves
These steps are for a serving employee. Retirees follow the same order, writing to the last office and to the pension sanctioning authority together.
Get the sanction order and the calculation
Ask in writing for a copy of the order that sanctioned the arrears and the arrears statement showing month by month what was due and what was drawn. If the office will not give it, use RTI. Without these two papers you cannot prove the amount.
Check your pay slips and bank statement
Go back to the month of the sanction and look for any partial credit or adjustment. Sometimes part of the arrears was paid and set off against an old recovery, which needs a different letter.
Write to the DDO with specific questions
Through proper channel, ask whether the supplementary bill was prepared, its date and number, whether the PAO raised an objection, and what is pending from your side. Ask for a reply within fifteen days.
Escalate to the Head of Office and the PAO
If there is no reply, write to the Head of Office and send a copy to the Pay and Accounts Officer or the Controller of Accounts. Accounts offices often answer faster because they can see the bill in their system.
File a representation that claims interest
When a reasonable time has passed, send a formal representation to the authority competent to sanction payment. Set out the dates, the amount and the delay, and ask for payment with interest at a stated rate. This is the document the tribunal will read first.
Use RTI for the file notings if the reply is vague
An RTI request for the notings on your arrears file usually shows exactly where it stopped and who sat on it.
Approach CAT if nothing moves
If the representation is not decided in six months, or is rejected, an Original Application can ask for a direction to pay within a fixed time, with interest. Read preparing and filing an OA under Section 19 before you draft it.
Do not send a fresh copy of the same letter every month. Repeated representations do not extend limitation, and they make the record look like a chain of reminders instead of one clear demand. Our page on writing the representation Section 20 expects explains how to frame one letter that does the job.
A made-up case: MACP arrears for an MES draughtsman in Jabalpur
Here's a made-up example. Ramesh, a draughtsman with the Military Engineer Services in Jabalpur, was granted his second MACP by an order of March 2024, effective from a date in 2022. The order showed the new pay level. His salary went up from April 2024, but the arrears for the two earlier years, roughly Rs 2.6 lakh, never came.
For ten months he was told the bill was with the accounts office. An RTI reply finally showed that the bill had gone to the Controller of Defence Accounts in mid 2024 and come back within a fortnight, asking for the fixation pro forma signed by the competent authority. The pro forma had never been sent. Nobody had asked Ramesh for anything.
He sent a representation in early 2025 with the RTI reply attached, asking for payment within a month and interest from June 2024. There was no response for six months. In this illustration, the Original Application at the Jabalpur Bench asked for payment with interest. The department paid the principal within weeks of notice, and the tribunal, finding the delay entirely on the office's side, directed simple interest at the GPF rate from three months after the sanction to the date of payment.
The detail that carried the case was the returned bill. It showed in the department's own papers that the money was ready to be paid and that the office alone had stalled it. Not every case has a document like that, which is why the RTI step matters.
Papers that prove the amount and the delay
The sanction
- The office order or memorandum sanctioning the revised pay, MACP, promotion arrears or increment
- The pay fixation statement or pro forma, if one was prepared
- Any court or tribunal order that directed the benefit
- The arrears calculation sheet, month by month
Your pay record
- Pay slips for the months before and after the sanction
- Bank statement showing salary credits for the same period
- Form 16 for the relevant years, which can show whether arrears were drawn and taxed
- Last pay certificate, if you were transferred
The paper trail of the delay
- Your letters to the DDO, Head of Office and PAO, with receipts or acknowledgements
- Any replies, objection memos or file notings received through RTI
- Proof that you supplied every document you were asked for, and when
- For retirees: PPO, revised PPO if any, and pension slips
Retirees and families: arrears that ride on pension
When pay is revised for a period before retirement, the arrears do not stop at salary. The revised last pay changes the pension, the gratuity, the commuted value and the leave encashment. Each of these needs its own fresh calculation and a revised authority from the pension sanctioning authority and the Central Pension Accounting Office. Retirees often receive the salary arrears and assume the job is done, when the larger amounts are still unpaid.
Ask for a revised PPO and check it against the new last pay. If gratuity was paid late because of the revision, Rule 65 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 may give you interest on that part as of right; the page on interest on late gratuity and leave encashment explains how that works. If the revised PPO shows the wrong pay, see correcting the pay shown in your PPO.
Where the employee has died, the legal heirs can claim arrears that were due to the employee, and the family pensioner can claim the difference in family pension. The office will ask for a death certificate, proof of relationship and, where there is no nomination for the amount, a succession certificate or indemnity, depending on the sum. Ask the office in writing which of these it needs, so you do not collect the wrong papers.
Is your claim too old?
A claim for sanctioned arrears is unusual in limitation terms. The cause is not the order that sanctioned the benefit; that order went in your favour. The grievance is the failure to pay, which continues every day the money is held back. That is why tribunals usually entertain such claims even when the sanction is a few years old.
Still, do not sit on it. If the department has written to you refusing payment, that refusal is a final order and the one-year period in Section 21 runs from it. If a representation was made and not answered, the year runs after the six months for a reply have passed. When a claim is filed late, file an application for condonation with it and explain the delay honestly; our page on late filing and condonation under Section 21 covers what tribunals accept.
The three-year limit on arrears from Tarsem Singh matters less here, because the amount is already quantified in an order. Departments sometimes argue it anyway. The guide to continuing wrongs in old pay and pension claims sets out where that limit is applied and where recent judgments have refused it.
Tax on a lump sum of arrears, and on interest
Arrears are taxed in the year you receive them, which can push you into a higher slab for that year. For arrears received up to the 2025-26 financial year, relief is claimed under Section 89 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 by filing Form 10E before your return. From the 2026-27 tax year the Income-tax Act, 2025 applies, and the equivalent relief is reported to sit in Section 157 with Form 39 replacing Form 10E. Ask your DDO to account for the relief when deducting TDS, and confirm the form with a tax adviser.
Interest that a tribunal awards on delayed arrears is generally taxed as income from other sources, not as salary, and the relief for arrears does not apply to it. Keep the order and the payment advice together for your return.
Railway, postal and defence civilian staff
Railway employees should look at Chapter X of the Indian Railway Establishment Manual, Volume I before writing. It ties the authority who can sanction investigation of an arrear claim to how old the claim is, and the General Manager's powers are limited for older periods. Address the representation to the right level, or it will be passed down and back up, losing months.
In the Department of Posts, an office memorandum of 28 July 2025 asked divisions to process personal claims within a month of receipt subject to funds, and to tell the claimant the status if payment is held for want of funds. The order speaks of personal claims such as children education allowance rather than pay arrears, but its point, that a claim must not sit unexplained and the employee must be told why, is worth quoting when an arrears bill has been lying with the divisional office for months.
Defence civilians in MES, ordnance depots, base workshops and other units are paid through the Defence Accounts Department, so the bill goes to the local accounts office under the Controller of Defence Accounts. Their cases are heard by CAT, not the Armed Forces Tribunal, because they are civilian employees.
When CAT is not your forum
CAT hears this claim only if you are a central government employee or pensioner, or work for a body notified under Section 14(2) of the Administrative Tribunals Act. Personnel of the CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP and SSB, employees of public sector companies and banks, and staff of autonomous bodies that are not notified go to the High Court under Article 226. The page on CAPF, PSU and bank employees going to the High Court explains that route.
Members of the Army, Navy and Air Force take pay and arrears disputes to the Armed Forces Tribunal. State government employees go to their State Administrative Tribunal where one exists, or to the High Court.
Which CAT bench hears the claim
Under Rule 6 of the CAT (Procedure) Rules, 1987, you file before the bench that covers the place where you are posted or where the cause of action arose. A retired employee may file where he or she ordinarily lives after retirement, which helps a pensioner who has moved back to a home town in another state.
If the sanction was issued by a ministry in Delhi and you are posted in Guwahati, both the Principal Bench and the Guwahati Bench may have jurisdiction, because part of the cause of action arose in each place. Pick the bench you can actually attend, and make sure the facts that give that bench jurisdiction appear in the OA.
Time and cost, stage by stage
| Stage | Usual time | Official cost |
|---|---|---|
| Letters to DDO, Head of Office and PAO | 2 to 8 weeks for a reply | Postage or a dak receipt |
| RTI for the bill and file notings | 30 days, plus first appeal if refused | Rs 10 application fee |
| Formal representation claiming interest | Wait up to 6 months under Section 20 | Nil |
| Original Application in CAT | Notice in a few weeks; decision often 6 to 24 months | A small fixed fee (Rs 50 under Rule 7 of the CAT Procedure Rules; check the current figure with the registry) |
| Compliance after the order | Usually the time the tribunal fixes, often 2 to 3 months | Contempt petition only if the order is ignored |
| Writ in the High Court, if either side challenges the order | Several months to a few years | Court fee and printing under the High Court's rules |
Mistakes that weaken an arrears claim
- Claiming without the sanction order. If you cannot show the order, the case turns into a fresh entitlement dispute, which is harder and slower.
- Ignoring a letter asking for an undertaking or option. The department will rely on it to say the delay was yours. Reply in writing, even if you think the demand is wrong, and say so in the reply.
- Accepting a part payment without comment. If a smaller amount is credited, write within a few weeks that it is accepted under protest and that the balance and interest are still claimed.
- Writing to the wrong authority. A complaint to a minister or a public grievance portal may help, but it is not the representation Section 20 asks for. Our guide on CPGRAMS or a tribunal case compares the two.
- Asking for a vague 'appropriate interest'. State a rate and a starting date, and give a reason for both. Tribunals take a definite claim more seriously.
- Mixing in old, unrelated grievances. An OA about sanctioned arrears that also attacks seniority and a transfer becomes a long case. Keep it to the money.
If you win and the money still does not come
Section 27 makes a tribunal order binding on the department, and Section 17 gives CAT the same power as a High Court to punish for contempt. If the time fixed for payment passes, write once to the department enclosing the order, wait a short while, and then file for compliance. Contempt is not a tool for a fresh calculation dispute, though; if the department pays a figure you think is wrong, that may need a fresh application. See when the department does not comply with your OA order.
Advocate B.K. Singh's experience is that compliance in money cases is quickest when the tribunal's order names the amount or the method of calculation, so it is worth asking for that in the OA itself rather than a general direction to 'consider' the claim.
Talking to us about your arrears
We are based in Dwarka, New Delhi and at Vaishali, Ghaziabad, and advise employees and pensioners in other cities over a video call. For a first look, bring the sanction order, the arrears statement if you have it, your pay slips and every letter you have sent. Fees are discussed at that first meeting and agreed in writing for each stage. If the arrears arise from a disputed fixation rather than an unpaid sanction, the page on wrong pay level or cell after the 7th CPC is the better starting point, and MACP disputes are covered under MACP not granted or withdrawn.
If your arrears have been sanctioned and are still not in your account, contact Advocate B.K. Singh for advice on your papers or for updates on the law.
Frequently asked questions
My arrears were sanctioned two years ago. Is it too late to claim them?
Usually not, because the failure to pay continues every month the money is held. If the department has written a clear refusal, though, the one-year period under Section 21 runs from that letter. Act now and file for condonation if there has been a long gap.
Can I get interest on salary arrears paid late?
There is no rule that gives automatic interest on pay arrears, unlike gratuity under Rule 65 of the pension rules. Tribunals do award simple interest where the delay was the department's fault and you supplied everything asked of you. The rate and starting date are in the tribunal's discretion.
The office says there are no funds. Can they hold my arrears for that reason?
A shortage at the end of a financial year can explain a short delay. It is rarely accepted as a reason for holding a sanctioned amount for many months. Ask in writing when funds were requested and when they are expected.
Who should I write to first, the DDO or the PAO?
Write to your DDO through proper channel, because the arrear bill starts there. Send a copy to the Pay and Accounts Officer, who can see in the system whether a bill was received or returned. Keep both acknowledgements.
I retired before the pay revision. Will my pension change too?
Yes, if the revision changes your last pay or average emoluments, your pension, gratuity, commutation and leave encashment all need recalculation. Ask for a revised PPO and check each figure. Salary arrears alone are only part of what is due.
Is interest awarded by CAT taxable?
Generally yes, as income from other sources. The arrears themselves are salary, and relief for arrears is available through Form 10E for older years or the new form under the Income-tax Act, 2025. Confirm the treatment with a tax adviser.
Can my wife claim my arrears if I die before they are paid?
Yes. Arrears due to a deceased employee are paid to the nominee or the legal heirs, and the office may ask for proof of relationship and an indemnity or succession certificate depending on the amount. Family pension differences are claimed separately by the family pensioner.
Do I need a lawyer to file an OA just for arrears?
You can file in person, and many simple arrears cases are short. A lawyer helps most with getting the record right, framing the interest claim and handling jurisdiction or limitation objections. Some employees take advice on the draft and argue the case themselves.