Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR)

The Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR) is the graded annual assessment written on every central government servant under Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2005-Estt.(A)(Pt-II) dated 14 May 2009, scored on a ten-point numerical scale and disclosed in full to the officer reported upon. It is written for the financial year, 1 April to 31 March. The overall grade it produces is the single number that decides whether an employee clears the benchmark at a departmental promotion committee, at a screening committee for a financial upgradation, and at empanelment for appointment at joint secretary level and above.

The abbreviation has two official expansions, and both come from the same document. The subject line of the 14 May 2009 Office Memorandum reads “Maintenance and preparation of Annual Performance Appraisal Reports”, while its operative clause at paragraph 2(i) states that “the existing nomenclature of the Annual Confidential Report will be modified as Annual Performance Assessment Report (APAR)”. The Department of Personnel and Training has used Appraisal and Assessment interchangeably since. Nothing turns on the difference.

Two features separate the APAR from the annual confidential report it replaced. The whole report goes to the employee, including the overall grade and the assessment of integrity, and the employee may represent against any part of it within fifteen days. Under the confidential report regime only adverse entries were communicated, so a Good grading against a Very Good benchmark could end a career without the employee ever learning of it. That was the precise mischief the Supreme Court identified in Dev Dutt v. Union of India, (2008) 8 SCC 725, decided 12 May 2008, which the 14 May 2009 Office Memorandum names as one of its two drivers, the other being the tenth report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission.

The machinery rests on two different legal foundations depending on who is being appraised. For members of the All India Services it is statutory, contained in the All India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007. For every other central government servant it is executive: a sequence of Office Memoranda issued by the Department of Personnel and Training, with no rule made under Article 309 governing the subject at all.

This article covers the governing instruments and their two start years, the structure of the form and the arithmetic behind the overall grade, the four grading bands, the calendar as revised in 2025, the reporting chain and the three-month rule, disclosure and representation, expunction of an adverse entry, the case law on communication of entries, the benchmarks applied at promotion and at MACP, the route to the Central Administrative Tribunal, the bearing of the record on premature retirement under Fundamental Rule 56(j), the absence of any link to the annual increment, the SPARROW electronic workflow, and the treatment of a blank or non-initiated report.

Governing instruments for the central civil services

There is no statutory rule governing the APAR of a central civil servant. The CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965, the CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964 and the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021 are silent on appraisal, and every instrument on the subject is an Office Memorandum. This matters in practice: an appraisal instruction can be modified by a fresh Office Memorandum without notification in the gazette, and departments issue their own standing orders restating the central instructions with local detail.

Four documents carry the operative content as of August 2026.

The 23 July 2009 Office Memorandum is cited by the Department of Personnel and Training itself under at least four different file numbers across its own documents, including 21011/01/2009-Estt.(A)(Pt.II), 21011/02/2009-Estt.(A) and 22011/1/2005-Estt(A)-(Pt-II). The number printed on the masthead of the document is No. 21011/1/2005-Estt.(A)(Pt-II), and that is the one to quote when a file number is required.

Two start years, not one

The single most common error about the APAR is to give it one start date. There are two, and they belong to different Office Memoranda.

The renaming and the disclosure regime applied from the reporting year 2008-09, for reports initiated after 1 April 2009, under paragraph 2(v) of the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009. The numerical grading format, with the pen picture, the ten-point scale and the weightages, applied from the reporting year 2009-10, under paragraph 2 of the Office Memorandum dated 23 July 2009. So 2008-09 was the first year that was called an APAR and the first year disclosed to the employee, while 2009-10 was the first year graded on the ten-point scale.

What changed from the annual confidential report

Four things changed, and the numerical grade is only one of them.

The word confidential no longer describes anything about the document as against the officer reported upon. It remains confidential as against a third party, a separate question governed by Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act, 2005.

The All India Services regime

The All India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007 were made under section 3(1) of the All India Services Act, 1951 and notified by G.S.R. 197(E) dated 14 March 2007, vide Notification No. 11059/18/2002-AIS-III, in supersession of the All India Services (Confidential Rolls) Rules, 1970. They govern the IAS, the IPS and the Indian Forest Service, and they use the term performance appraisal report rather than APAR.

The rules have been amended repeatedly. G.S.R. 296(E) dated 16 April 2007 and G.S.R. 256(E) dated 31 March 2008 followed within a year. The 2010 amendment rules substituted rule 5(7) on writing a report after retirement or demission of office. The largest overhaul came through Notification No. 11059/01/2016-AIS-III dated 15 June 2017, published as G.S.R. 596(E) dated 16 June 2017, which inserted rule 4A on mandatory electronic filing, rule 7A on the one-month cut-off after retirement, and rule 7B declaring a non-compliant report non est, and substituted rule 9 on disclosure and representation. G.S.R. 519(E) dated 23 July 2019 substituted the IAS forms in Appendix I.

The two regimes diverge on several points that matter to an officer trying to work out what applies.

Structure of the form

Paragraphs (i) to (vi) of the Office Memorandum dated 23 July 2009 prescribe the form. The report opens with the part filled in by the officer reported upon, the self-appraisal, and then moves through three blocks of numerical assessment, a set of descriptive columns, and a pen picture.

The pen picture is a box in which the reporting authority comments on the overall qualities of the officer, including areas of strength and lesser strength and the officer’s attitude towards the weaker sections. A separate column carries the reviewing authority’s remarks on that pen picture. The Office Memorandum is emphatic that “there will be no other separate column in the APAR for overall assessment apart from the pen picture”, so the pen picture, and not a narrative summary elsewhere, is where the qualitative case for or against an officer is made.

The three graded blocks and their weightages are fixed:

Each block carries three columns, for the reporting authority, the reviewing authority, and the initial of the reviewing authority. Each block also ends with its own overall grading.

Several columns survive from the confidential report format and remain descriptive rather than numerical. Paragraph 2 of the 23 July 2009 Office Memorandum preserves the part filled in by the officer reported upon and “other existing columns in the APAR format like attitude towards SC/ST/OBC, relations with public (wherever applicable), integrity, training requirement etc. for descriptive remarks”. Integrity is therefore certified in words, not scored.

For Group B and Group C officials the structure is common but the line items are not. The Office Memorandum permits that “suitable changes may be made by the concerned cadre authorities in the items of assessment as per functional requirements of the job and the next promotional post for them”. The three blocks and the 40, 30 and 30 split stay fixed; what is listed inside each block is set by the cadre authority.

The ten-point grading scale and its four bands

Numerical grading runs on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 the lowest and 10 the highest, awarded by both the reporting and the reviewing authority under the guidelines at Annexure I to the Office Memorandum dated 23 July 2009. The accepting authority, where the cadre has one, records its own overall grade on the same scale.

The bands are these:

Annexure I writes the boundaries in whole numbers because the block grades are whole numbers. The overall grade is fractional, because it is a weighted mean, which is how the Very Good band comes to be described elsewhere as 6.0 to below 8.0. No instruction prescribes rounding of the overall grade, and none should be assumed.

The arithmetic is set out in Annexure I. The grades recorded in each block are summed and divided by the number of entries in that block to give a block mean. The three block means are multiplied by 0.4, 0.3 and 0.3 respectively, and the three products are added to give the overall grade. An officer graded 8 across work output, 7 across personal attributes and 7 across functional competency therefore reaches an overall grade of 7.4, which is Very Good and not Outstanding.

Where a grade must be justified

The justification requirement attaches to the extremes of the scale, not to the top band. Annexure I clause (ii) reads that “any grading of 1 or 2 (against work output or attributes or overall grade) would be adequately justified in the pen picture by way of specific failures and similarly, any grade of 9 or 10 would be justified with respect to specific accomplishments. Grades of 1-2 or 9-10 are expected to be rare occurrences and hence the need to justify them.”

An Outstanding grading therefore does not automatically require justification, because the Outstanding band opens at 8. Only 9 and 10 do. Paragraph 7.1 of the general guidelines in Schedule 2 to the All India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007 carries the same text.

The same clause fixes the comparator. In awarding a numerical grade, the reporting and reviewing authorities are to rate the officer “against a larger population of his or her peers that may be currently working under them”, which is what stops a grading from being calibrated only against the three or four people in one section.

Reporting authority, reviewing authority and accepting authority

For the All India Services the three roles are defined by rule. The reporting authority is the authority supervising the performance of the member of the Service reported upon, the reviewing authority is the authority supervising the performance of the reporting authority, and the accepting authority is the authority supervising the performance of the reviewing authority, in each case as specifically empowered by the Government (rules 2(j), 2(k) and 2(a)).

For the central civil services none of the three is defined anywhere. The cadre designates the chain, and the Office Memorandum dated 23 July 2009 refers to the accepting authority only “wherever ‘accepting authority’ has been prescribed in the existing system in the cadre”.

An accepting authority does not exist everywhere. The clearest proof sits inside Annexure III itself, which prescribes two different disclosure dates: 1 September where there is no accepting authority, and 15 September where there is one. Where an employee has only one supervisory level above, as with personal staff attached to officers, the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009 directs that communication be made once the reporting officer has completed the assessment.

The reviewing authority may differ from the reporting authority, and a column exists for it to state the difference specifically along with the reasons. That column is not decorative. Where the higher authority has consciously overruled the one below, a departmental promotion committee treats the higher authority’s remarks as the final remarks for its assessment.

The three-month minimum period of supervision

No authority in the chain may write, review or accept a report unless it has supervised the officer for at least three months during the reporting year.

For the All India Services this is statutory and its consequences are worked out in the rules themselves. Where the reporting authority has not seen the performance for three months but the reviewing authority has, the reviewing authority writes the report (rule 5(4)). Where neither has but the accepting authority has, the accepting authority writes it (rule 5(5)). Where none of the three has, the Government makes an entry to that effect in the report (rule 5(6)), which is the statutory ancestor of the No Report Certificate. Rule 6(3) applies the same bar to review, and the proviso to rule 7(1) to acceptance.

For the central civil services the three-month rule is a standing Department of Personnel and Training instruction rather than a numbered rule, and it is restated in departmental standing orders. Those standing orders add a computation detail that catches people out: where the officer reported upon has taken earned leave for more than 15 days, that leave is deducted from the total period spent on the post when the three months are computed. Leave of short duration is disregarded.

A broken reporting chain

Departmental standing orders restating the central instructions deal with the ordinary breaks in the chain as follows. A reporting officer transferred during the year writes the report for the part-year immediately, provided the three months are met, and the reviewing officer reviews it within two weeks of receipt rather than waiting for the year to end. Where a reviewing authority retires and the successor lacks three months, the reviewing portion is left blank with a note recorded to that effect. Where no reporting officer has three months but the reviewing officer does, the reviewing officer may himself initiate the report, and it is then reviewed by the officer above him.

The All India Services rules impose a hard cut-off. Rule 7A, inserted on 15 June 2017, bars a reporting, reviewing or accepting authority who is a government servant from writing a report after one month of retirement from service, and in other cases after one month of the date of demitting office. The rule then defines when a Minister is deemed to have demitted office: not where he continues in a reconstituted Council under the same Prime Minister or Chief Minister, but yes where a new Council is constituted after fresh elections.

The reporting year and the calendar

The reporting year is the financial year, 1 April to 31 March. Annexure III to Office Memorandum No. 21011/10/2025-PP(A-II) dated 9 April 2025 replaced the earlier schedule in partial modification of Annexure III to the Office Memorandum dated 23 July 2009, and applies from the reporting year 2024-25.

Two things changed on 9 April 2025. The self-appraisal moved from 15 April to 15 May, and an explicit auto-forward date was added one day after each due date, reflecting the SPARROW workflow in which the file moves on by itself. Anything written before April 2025 that gives 15 April as the self-appraisal deadline is out of date.

The calendar has been relaxed several times for particular years. Office Memorandum No. 21011/02/2015-Est(A-II)-Part II dated 13 June 2017 gave a one-time relaxation for 2016-17 to organised Group A services switching to SPARROW. Two Office Memoranda dated 27 March 2020 and 30 March 2020 revised the 2019-20 schedule for the pandemic, the second extending the timelines to authorities who had demitted office or retired on or after 29 February 2020. Office Memorandum No. 21011/04/2023-Estt.(A.II) dated 30 August 2024 gave a one-time extension for 2023-24, moving the reporting officer’s date to 15 October and the reviewing officer’s completion to 15 December.

The All India Services calendar in paragraph 9.1 of Schedule 2 runs on different dates: blank form 1 April, self-appraisal 31 May, reporting authority 31 July, reviewing authority “31st September”, accepting authority 31 December with auto closure on that date, and disclosure 31 December. The date given for the reviewing authority is what the rule text says, and September has thirty days. It is a drafting error that survives in the current consolidated text.

Paragraph 9.7 of the same Schedule carries a sanction worth noting. If the reporting authority fails to submit in time, the nodal officer sends the self-appraisal directly to the reviewing authority and authorises it to initiate the report, and records the reporting authority’s failure for an entry in that reporting authority’s own appraisal report.

Disclosure of the report to the officer

The whole report goes to the officer. Paragraph 2(ii) of the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009 requires that “the full APAR including the overall grade and assessment of integrity shall be communicated to the concerned officer” once the report is complete with the remarks of the reviewing officer and the accepting authority where such a system is in force.

For the All India Services, rule 9(1) requires the full report including the overall grade and the assessment of integrity to be disclosed electronically to the officer after finalisation by the accepting authority, except where it was generated manually.

Two consequences follow from full disclosure that are easy to miss. A blank integrity column is visible to the officer, because integrity forms part of what must be communicated. And the date of disclosure, not the end of the reporting year, starts the clock for a representation, which is why SPARROW records that date and why an officer should retain proof of it.

Representation against an entry or a grading

A representation lies within fifteen days from the date of receipt of the entries, under paragraph 2(iv) of the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009. It must be “restricted to the specific factual observations contained in the report leading to assessment of the officer in terms of attributes, work output etc.” A representation that argues the reporting officer was biased, without engaging with a specific factual observation, is outside the permitted scope.

Where no representation is received within the fifteen days, it is deemed that the officer has none to make and the report is treated as final. There is no provision for condonation of the delay.

The competent authority is whoever the cadre’s existing instructions already designate for considering adverse remarks. In the ordinary arrangement this is the authority next senior to the accepting authority, though that is a departmental practice rather than a rule stated by the Department of Personnel and Training. That authority may consult the reporting or reviewing officer if necessary, and must “decide the matter objectively based on the material placed before him within a period of thirty days from the date of receipt of the representation” (paragraph 2(vi)). It may reject the representation, or accept it and modify the report. The decision and the final grading are communicated to the officer within fifteen days of the APAR section receiving the decision (paragraph 2(vii)).

Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2010-Estt.A dated 13 April 2010 tightened the standard of that decision. The competent authority must decide “objectively in a quasi-judicial manner on the basis of material placed before it”, take into account the officer’s contentions and the views of the reporting and reviewing officers where they are still in service, and, where it upgrades the final grading, record specific reasons in its order. The Office Memorandum records why: the Union Public Service Commission had complained that competent authorities were upgrading below benchmark gradings to the benchmark without giving any reason.

No second appeal for the central civil services

Once the competent authority has decided, the central civil services route is exhausted. The Department of Personnel and Training has clarified that the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009 does not provide for a further representation or appeal after the competent authority has decided the first one, and a second representation is not entertained. This is a genuine difference from the appeal, review and revision machinery under the CCS (CCA) Rules, which applies to penalties and not to appraisal gradings; the two remedies are routinely confused.

All India Services officers have two further tiers. Rule 9(7) sends the representation to a competent authority one level above the accepting authority, which modifies the report only “with a speaking order” (rule 9(7A)). Where the accepting authority is a Minister, that authority is itself the competent authority (rule 9(7B)). A further representation lies to the Referral Board within one month under rule 9(8), “provided that such representation shall be confined to errors of facts”. The Board may confirm or modify the report including the overall grade, must record reasons where an entry is upgraded or downgraded, and its decision is final, after which “no further representation of any kind shall be entertained” (rules 9(9) and 9(10)). Rule 10 preserves a memorial to the President within ninety days under rule 25 of the All India Services (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1969.

Challenging a grading before the Central Administrative Tribunal

An application to the Central Administrative Tribunal lies only after the departmental representation against the appraisal report has been exhausted, and it succeeds on how the grading was arrived at rather than on what the grading should have been.

Section 20(1) of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 bars the Tribunal from ordinarily admitting an application unless the applicant has availed of all the remedies available under the relevant service rules. For a central civil servant that means the fifteen-day representation under paragraph 2(iv) of the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009 and the competent authority’s decision on it; for an All India Services officer it means the competent authority under rule 9(7), the Referral Board under rule 9(8), or the six months allowed to run without a decision. Section 20(2) treats the remedies as exhausted in two ways: on a final order rejecting the representation, or on six months expiring from the date the representation was made without a final order. The application is then filed under Section 19 within the one-year limitation in Section 21.

The grounds that work are procedural. The 13 April 2010 Office Memorandum requires the competent authority to decide objectively and in a quasi-judicial manner on the material placed before it, and rule 9(7A) of the All India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007 requires a speaking order before a report is modified; an order that recites the conclusion without engaging with the officer’s specific factual contentions is open to challenge on that footing. So is a report written after the cut-off, a report written by an authority without the three months of supervision, and a below benchmark report placed before a promotion committee without disclosure or without disposal of the representation, which paragraph 9.1 of the consolidated guidelines dated 22 July 2024 forbids.

The ground that does not work is the merits of the assessment. Neither the Tribunal nor a High Court substitutes its own view of an officer’s work output or personal attributes for the reporting authority’s, and the ordinary relief where a challenge succeeds is a direction to the competent authority to decide the representation afresh by a speaking order, not a grading awarded by the court. An order of the Tribunal is challenged before a Division Bench of the High Court under Articles 226 and 227, following L. Chandra Kumar v. Union of India, (1997) 3 SCC 261, and not by an appeal straight to the Supreme Court.

The integrity column

Integrity is certified in words, and the procedure for doing so is one of the few parts of the appraisal machinery set out in a statutory text. Paragraph 4.5 of Schedule 2 to the All India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007 states it, and the identical text is carried word for word in departmental standing orders for the central civil services.

The reporting authority is directed that in recording remarks on integrity it “need not limit him/herself only to matters relating to financial integrity but could also take into account the moral and intellectual integrity” of the officer. The procedure then runs:

(i) If the Officer’s integrity is beyond doubt, it may be stated. (ii) If there is any doubt or suspicion, the column should be left blank and action taken as under: (a) A separate secret note should be recorded and followed up. A copy of the note should also be sent together with the Performance Appraisal Report to the next superior officer who will ensure that the follow up action is taken expeditiously. Where it is not possible either to certify the integrity or to record the secret note, the Reporting Officer should state either that he/she had not watched the officer’s work for sufficient time to form a definite judgement or that he/she has heard nothing against the officer, as the case may be.

If the follow-up clears the doubt, integrity is certified and an entry made accordingly. If it confirms the doubt, that fact is recorded and duly communicated to the officer. If the doubt is neither cleared nor confirmed, the officer’s conduct “should be watched for a further period” and the same two outcomes are then applied.

No time limit closes that further period. An integrity column can remain blank across successive years without any instruction being breached, and there is no deemed certification.

The integrity assessment in the appraisal is a separate gate from vigilance clearance, which runs on its own grounds under Office Memorandum No. 104/33/2024-AVD-IA dated 9 October 2024. A default in the immovable property return denies vigilance clearance; a grading, high or low, does not.

Expunction of an adverse entry

There is no separate expunction application. Correction runs through the fifteen-day representation route in paragraph 2(iv) of the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009, and the authority the cadre already designates for considering adverse remarks “may reject the representation or may accept and modify the APAR accordingly” under paragraph 2(vi). Where it upgrades the final grading it must record specific reasons in its order, under Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2010-Estt.A dated 13 April 2010.

Where a decision is taken to expunge a portion of the remarks, departmental standing orders describe how it is physically done. The adverse remarks are obliterated “in such a way that on perusal of the APAR folder, no indication is available to anyone who reads it that such adverse remarks were even recorded against the officer”, and all papers or letters reproducing or indicating the nature of those remarks are removed from the dossier as well. An expunged remark is meant to leave no trace, not a visible strike-through.

Communication of every entry: Dev Dutt and Sukhdev Singh

Every entry in an appraisal report must be communicated to the officer within a reasonable period, whether it is poor, fair, average, good or very good, and non-communication is arbitrary and violates Article 14. Three Supreme Court decisions carry that position, and the later of the two leading ones entrenched the earlier rather than diluting it.

Dev Dutt v. Union of India, (2008) 8 SCC 725, Civil Appeal No. 7631 of 2002, was decided on 12 May 2008 by Markandey Katju and H. K. Sema JJ. At paragraph 19 the Court held that every entry in the appraisal of a public servant must be communicated within a reasonable period, “whether it is a poor, fair, average, good or very good entry”, because non-communication both deprives the servant of the knowledge needed to improve and deprives him of the opportunity to represent for an upgradation. Non-communication is therefore arbitrary and violates Article 14. Paragraph 20 goes further: communication is required “not only when there is a bench mark but in all cases”, and “even an outstanding entry should be communicated since that would boost the morale of the employee”.

Paragraph 18 contains the reasoning that explains why the point matters at all. Against a Very Good benchmark applied over five years, a single Good entry can make an officer ineligible for promotion, and that Good entry may have been given out of personal pique, because the officer refused to do something wrong, because he declined to flatter his superior, or out of caste or communal prejudice.

Sukhdev Singh v. Union of India, (2013) 9 SCC 566, decided on 23 April 2013 by R. M. Lodha, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph JJ, is the larger bench. At paragraph 6 it recorded complete agreement with Dev Dutt and expressly approved it. At paragraph 8 it held that every entry, poor, fair, average, good or very good, must be communicated within a reasonable period. At paragraph 9 it declared Satya Narain Shukla v. Union of India, (2006) 9 SCC 69 and K. M. Mishra v. Central Bank of India, (2008) 9 SCC 120, along with other decisions taking a contrary view, not to lay down good law. Sukhdev Singh did not dilute Dev Dutt; it affirmed it and cleared away the line of authority running the other way.

One older observation is still quoted against employees and no longer decides anything. In U.P. Jal Nigam v. Prabhat Chandra Jain, (1996) 2 SCC 363, decided on 31 January 1996 by M. M. Punchhi and K. S. Paripoornan JJ, the Court said that a graded entry going a step down, from Very Good to Good, “may not ordinarily be an adverse entry since both are a positive grading”. That was decided under rules requiring communication of adverse entries alone. Since Dev Dutt and Sukhdev Singh require every entry to be communicated whatever its label, and since paragraph 2(ii) of the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009 discloses the whole report in any event, whether a downgrading counts as adverse no longer governs disclosure. It survives only as a reason a competent authority may give for declining to treat a Good entry as a grievance on its face.

Abhijit Ghosh Dastidar v. Union of India, (2009) 16 SCC 146, decided on 22 October 2008 by K. G. Balakrishnan CJI, P. Sathasivam and J. M. Panchal JJ, supplies the remedy. Where the benchmark for promotion was Very Good and an entry of Good had not been communicated, the Court held that the entry “should not have been taken into consideration for being considered for promotion to the higher grade”. The judgment expressly excludes the armed forces from its reach; the holding covers civil, judicial, police and other services.

Before a departmental promotion committee

A departmental promotion committee reads the appraisal reports of five reporting years against a benchmark of Very Good at Pay Level 12 and above and Good below it, and it grades every officer only fit or unfit. The Department of Personnel and Training consolidated the governing instructions in the “Guidelines on Departmental Promotion Committees” dated 22 July 2024, which cites the source Office Memorandum for each paragraph and is now the single reference for how appraisal reports are used at promotion.

Which years are reckoned

Five years, and they are the five preceding the T-2 year, not the vacancy year. Office Memorandum No. 22011/4/2013-Estt.(D) dated 8 May 2017 states at paragraph 5(iii) that “the APARs for five years preceding T-2nd year may be taken as reckoning APARs”, and gives the worked example: for the vacancy year 2019, the reckoning reports are 2016-17, 2015-16, 2014-15, 2013-14 and 2012-13.

The two-year gap exists because of the appraisal calendar. The entire process for a reporting year ends only on 30 November of the following year, while the promotion proposal must reach the Union Public Service Commission by 15 July in cases requiring approval of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, and by 31 July otherwise, under Office Memorandum No. 22011/9/98-Estt.(D) dated 8 September 1998. The report of the year immediately preceding therefore has not attained finality when the committee sits. The same 2017 Office Memorandum shifted the vacancy year to the calendar year from 2018 and fixed the crucial date of eligibility at 1 January of the vacancy year from 2019.

The benchmark for promotion

Office Memorandum No. 35034/7/97-Estt.(D) dated 8 February 2002 sets the benchmark by level, and the mode of promotion in every case is “selection”, the distinction between selection by merit and selection-cum-seniority having been dispensed with.

The requirement that the benchmark be met in every one of the five reports at Level 14 and above comes from paragraph 3 of Office Memorandum No. 22011/3/2007-Estt.(D) dated 18 February 2008, which expressed it in the pre-revised scale of Rs. 18,400-22,400 and above and brought it into force from the panel year 2008-09. At the lower levels the committee assesses the reports in the round rather than requiring the benchmark in each year.

How the committee reads the reports

Paragraph 4.4.4 of the consolidated guidelines, drawing on Office Memorandum No. 22011/5/86-Estt.(D) dated 10 April 1989, sets out rules that repeatedly surprise employees.

An equal number of years is considered for every officer in the field. Where more than one report was written for a particular year, all of them are considered together as the report for that one year. Reports earned while officiating in the next higher grade may be considered, but no extra weightage is given merely for having officiated.

Where a report is missing for any reason, the committee first considers the reports of the years preceding the period in question; if those are unavailable it takes reports of the lower grade to complete the required number; and if that too is impossible, all available reports are taken into account. A gap is filled, not counted against the officer.

The committee is directed not to be guided merely by the overall grading, and to make its own assessment on the entries, “because it has been noticed that sometimes the overall grading in an APAR may be inconsistent with the grading under various parameters or attributes”. Where its assessment is not in line with the grades in the reports, it must substantiate that assessment by giving reasons.

On a grading of Average, the guidelines are blunt: while it may not be treated as an adverse remark, “it cannot be regarded as complimentary”, and average performance “should be regarded as routine and undistinguished”.

Where the reviewing or accepting authority has overruled the authority below it, the higher authority’s remarks are the final remarks for the committee’s assessment, provided the entries show a conscious and applied-mind different assessment. Where the three sets of remarks are complementary and none overrules another, they are read together.

Disclosure and representation as a precondition

Paragraph 9.1 of the consolidated guidelines places the duty on the department, not the employee: before the reports for the reckoning period go to the committee, “it should be ensured that all the relevant APARs have been disclosed to the officers concerned and the representations received, if any, against adverse remarks or below Benchmark Gradings, have also been disposed of”.

Paragraph 9.2, drawing on Office Memorandum No. 22011/5/2013-Estt.(D) dated 9 May 2014, adds what the committee does with the outcome. It makes its own assessment on the entries, the gradings and other relevant material, which includes the competent authority’s order on the representation. Where the committee decides not to take cognisance of that order on the ground that it is not a speaking order, it assesses the case on the entries and other material including the representation itself. It must give justifiable and sustainable reasons wherever its assessment differs from the grading, original or amended.

That 2014 Office Memorandum was issued for a specific reason recorded in its own text: committees had been recording officers as unfit because the department had not disposed of the representation. That route is now closed. A departmental failure cannot be converted into a finding against the officer.

For reports of periods before 2008-09, which were never disclosed under the old regime, Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2010-Estt.A dated 13 April 2010 requires that where a reckonable report carries a final grading below the benchmark for the next promotion, the employee be given a copy for representation within 15 days before it is placed before the committee. Only the below benchmark report for the relevant period need be sent, not those of other years.

Bearing on a MACP financial upgradation

The benchmark for a financial upgradation under the Modified Assured Career Progression scheme is Very Good for all levels, an overall score of 6.0 to below 8.0. Office Memorandum No. 35034/3/2015-Estt.(D) dated 28 September 2016 raised it from Good, and the consolidated MACP guidelines of 22 October 2019 restate at paragraph 17(i) that it is effective for upgradations falling due on or after 25 July 2016 and applies to the reports for 2016-17 and subsequent years. The MACP benchmark is assessed by a departmental screening committee against the reports in the reckoning period.

The transition is graded by year and by level, and the table printed in the consolidated guidelines is the authority for it:

For 2015-16 and earlier the position under the 19 May 2009 MACP guidelines continues: the benchmark of Good applied up to the grade pay of Rs. 6,600 in PB-3, and Very Good for an upgradation to the grade pay of Rs. 7,600 and above.

Two consequences are worth separating from the general promotion rules. A shortfall against the benchmark defers the upgradation rather than forfeiting it, and a delay in the first upgradation pushes the later ones back by the same period. And where disciplinary or penalty proceedings are on foot, paragraph 18 of the consolidated guidelines makes the grant of the benefit “subject to rules governing normal promotion”, regulated under the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965. The distinction between an upgradation and a promotion is set out separately in MACP versus promotion.

Bearing on premature retirement under Fundamental Rule 56(j)

The appraisal record is the core evidence at a periodic review under Fundamental Rule 56(j), and this is the one setting in which an entry that was never communicated to the employee may still be counted against them.

In Baikuntha Nath Das v. Chief District Medical Officer, Baripada, (1992) 2 SCC 299, decided on 19 February 1992 by B. P. Jeevan Reddy, L. M. Sharma and V. Ramaswami JJ, the Supreme Court held that an order of compulsory retirement is not liable to be quashed merely on the showing that uncommunicated adverse remarks were also taken into consideration while passing it. The reasoning turns on what the order is: retirement in the public interest is not a punishment, carries no stigma, and follows no charge and no inquiry, so the principles of natural justice do not require the employee to be heard first. The government forms a subjective satisfaction on the entire service record, with greater weight on the recent record.

That is the exact opposite of the position at a promotion. Under Abhijit Ghosh Dastidar v. Union of India, (2009) 16 SCC 146, an uncommunicated entry below the benchmark cannot be taken into consideration by a departmental promotion committee. The two rules coexist because the two decisions do different work: a promotion committee applies a fixed benchmark to graded entries, while a review committee under Fundamental Rule 56(j) forms an overall judgement on continued utility.

The machinery is set out in the consolidated instructions of the Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 25013/03/2019-Estt.A-IV dated 28 August 2020. Cadre authorities maintain registers of employees due for review about six months before they attain age 50 or 55 or complete 30 years of service, and a review committee of officers senior to the employee assesses the whole record against three tests: integrity, competence and efficiency, and continued utility. A declining run of gradings is what the second and third tests read. Because full disclosure has applied since the reporting year 2008-09, an employee whose reports were written after that year will in practice have seen every entry the committee looks at, and the Baikuntha Nath Das rule now bites mainly on the older part of a long career. The scope of a challenge to the resulting order is narrow and is set out in premature retirement.

Effect on the annual increment

An appraisal grading does not touch the annual increment. No instruction links the two.

Rule 9 of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 grants the increment by moving the employee one cell down the same level of the pay matrix, and Rule 10 fixes the date at 1 January or 1 July, subject to six months of qualifying service at the stage. Neither rule refers to a grading, a benchmark or a report. An employee graded Good, or graded below 4, draws the increment on the ordinary date.

The increment is stopped only as a penalty. Withholding of increment is a minor penalty under Rule 11(iv) of the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965, imposed after proceedings on a charge of misconduct, and a low grading is not a charge. The two routes are separate throughout: a grading is contested by representation to the competent authority within 15 days, a penalty by appeal under Rule 23.

Paragraph 5.1.46 of the Seventh Central Pay Commission report proposed the link and it was not made. The Commission recommended withholding annual increments, as an efficiency bar rather than a penalty, from employees who fail to meet the benchmark for either a financial upgradation or a regular promotion within their first 20 years of service. The consolidated Modified Assured Career Progression guidelines of 22 October 2019 carry no such provision, and no separate Office Memorandum has introduced one.

Sealed cover, penalties and empanelment

A pending disciplinary or criminal case does not stop the assessment; it seals the result. Where an employee is under suspension, has been issued a charge sheet with departmental proceedings pending, or faces a pending criminal prosecution, the sealed cover procedure applies. Under Office Memorandum No. 22011/4/91-Estt.(A) dated 14 September 1992, issued after Union of India v. K. V. Jankiraman, the committee still assesses suitability along with the other eligible candidates without taking the pending case into consideration, and the assessment, including a finding of unfit and the grading awarded, is kept in a sealed cover. Pendency of judicial proceedings is defined by reference to Explanation 1(b)(i) under Rule 8 of the CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021.

If a penalty is imposed or the officer is found guilty, the sealed cover findings are not acted upon and the case goes to the next committee in the normal course having regard to the penalty. The case is reviewed every six months from the date of the first committee, and an ad hoc promotion may be considered where the proceedings are not concluded within two years.

One instruction here runs against widespread departmental practice. Where a penalty has been imposed in a year falling within the assessment matrix, committees used to downgrade the appraisal reports by one level across the board. Office Memorandum No. 22011/4/2007-Estt.(D) dated 28 April 2014 directed that “the practice of downgradation of APARs (earlier ACRs) by one level in all cases for one time, where a penalty has been imposed in a year included in the assessment matrix or till the date of DPC, should be discontinued immediately, being legally non-sustainable”. Each case is to be assessed on its own facts.

For empanelment, the All India Services rules supply the definitions the central civil services lack. Rule 2(c) defines empanelment as the process of assessing suitability for appointment at the level of joint secretary and above and equivalent posts in the Government of India. Rule 2(b) defines the benchmark score as “the minimum numerical weighted mean score arrived at for overall grading above which an officer shall be regarded as fit for promotion or empanelment”. This is also where the 9, 7, 5 and 0 conversion in Annexure I does its work: those numbers exist expressly “for calculating average scores for empanelment or promotion”, and are not a second grading scale.

SPARROW and electronic filing

SPARROW, the Smart Performance Appraisal Report Recording Online Window, is a web application built by the National Informatics Centre under the eOffice suite. It holds the appraisal dossier for each officer and runs the whole annual cycle online, with workflow-based approval passing between the reporting, reviewing and accepting authorities from creation of the report to its closure.

For the All India Services, electronic filing is a statutory obligation. Rule 4A, inserted by G.S.R. 596(E) dated 16 June 2017, requires the report to be generated and written electronically by the officer reported upon and the comments of the three authorities to be recorded electronically where the authority is a government servant. Political executives may record their comments manually, and the report is then uploaded. A manual report is possible only with the approval of the Government and for reasons recorded in writing, and a permanent exemption requires the prior approval of the Central Government in consultation with the Department of Personnel and Training on grounds such as national security.

Rule 7B carries the sharpest consequence in the whole system: a report “not recorded in terms of the provisions of these rules and instructions issued thereunder shall be treated as non est”, and every report “filed manually without approval of the Government to do so shall be treated as non est”. A report treated as non est does not exist for any purpose, including promotion and empanelment.

For the central civil services, rollout has proceeded by service. Office Memorandum No. 21011/02/2015-Est(A-II)-Part II dated 13 June 2017 mandated online generation through SPARROW for organised Group A services from the reporting year 2016-17, and granted a one-time relaxation of the target dates because cadre authorities had reported practical difficulties in switching from manual to online mode. Office Memorandum No. 22/2/2020-CS-I(APAR) dated 22 May 2020 required all reports of Group A and Group B officers of the Central Secretariat Service to be generated through SPARROW.

What changes procedurally is worth knowing before a deadline is missed. A Custodian creates the workflow from the basic employee information supplied by the officer, part-wise where the year is fragmented, with the relieving order, joining report, leave orders, training orders and deputation details attached. Where a report does not reach the reporting officer in time, the Custodian force-forwards it. The auto-forward dates in the 2025 Annexure III move the file on by itself the day after each due date, and the All India Services schedule has carried an auto closure on 31 December since 2017. Officers on deputation to organisations where SPARROW is not deployed, such as state governments and public sector undertakings, continue on the manual format.

A blank, non-initiated or forfeited report

Where no report can properly be written for a period, the gap is regularised by a certificate rather than left as an unexplained blank. It is called a No Report Certificate in the Department of Posts and in SPARROW usage, and a Non-Initiation Certificate in the central armed police forces; the two names describe the same document.

The recognised grounds are that the officer reported upon did not work for a minimum of three months under a reporting officer, was on leave or training during the period, was on unauthorised absence, or was under suspension. In SPARROW an officer selecting this option may cite multiple reporting officers, a period of service under a reporting officer of less than three months, or availing earned leave, maternity leave, child care leave or study leave for more than 15 days.

Forfeiture is the other route to a blank report, and it operates against the officer who failed to write it. A reporting officer who does not initiate the report by the stipulated date forfeits the right to enter any remarks, and the same applies to the reviewing officer beyond the prescribed date. Where the right is forfeited, a certificate to that effect is added to the report for the relevant period. Where both forfeit, the form carrying only the self-appraisal is placed in the dossier and the case proceeds for a No Report Certificate.

The consequence at the promotion stage is the fallback already described: reports of preceding years, then reports of the lower grade, then all available reports. A blank year is not read as a poor year.

Probation, deputation, suspension and a fragmented year

Probation. The appraisal report and the probation report are separate documents that coexist. The Department of Personnel and Training Master Circular on probation and confirmation, Office Memorandum No. 28020/3/2018-Estt.(C) dated 11 March 2019, directs at paragraph 5 that a probationer be given work under more than one officer so that the assessment is not the view of a single reporting officer, and that separate probation reports be written in addition to the usual appraisal reports. At the end of probation, a Departmental Confirmation Committee assesses the probationer as fit or not yet fit with reference to the appraisal reports for the period of probation, which is dealt with in confirmation in service.

Deputation and foreign service. The borrowing organisation writes the report and the parent cadre obtains it for the dossier. For the All India Services, the second proviso to rule 4 requires a report to be written for members of the Service on deputation and directs that it “be treated as mandatory input for empanelment and promotion”. The third proviso extends the requirement to officers on training or study leave.

Suspension. No report is written for a period of suspension; it is one of the four grounds for a No Report Certificate. An officer who is himself under suspension for the major part of a period is also not to write or review reports on others.

More than one reporting officer in a year. The All India Services rules require each report to indicate the period it covers, and that “only one report shall be written on a member of the Service for a particular period” (rule 5(3)). Rule 5(3A), inserted in 2017, directs that in general one person shall write the report in each capacity for a given period, and that where more than one person supervises, the Government identify the reporting or reviewing person well in advance of the relevant assessment year. At the promotion stage all reports for a year are read together as the report for that one year.

A fragmented year. The three-month minimum applies to each fragment separately. Where a gap remains, the reporting officer mentions the period of the gap at the top of the report with the reasons why no report was written for it, or a No Report Certificate covers it. Under SPARROW the officer supplies the fragment details part-wise, and on transfer where the reporting period is three months or more must submit the details to the Custodian within five days, with the process to be completed within one month of the transfer.

Access by a third party under the Right to Information Act

Disclosure to the officer reported upon is mandatory and is not a Right to Information question at all. It flows from paragraph 2(ii) of the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009 and from rule 9(1) of the All India Services rules.

Access by a third party is a different matter, and two Supreme Court decisions frame it. In Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, (2013) 1 SCC 212, decided on 3 October 2012, the Court held that the service record and connected personal details of a public servant, including memos, show cause notices, censure orders and asset details, are personal information exempt under Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act, 2005, and that “the performance of an employee or officer in an organisation is primarily a matter between the employee and the employer”, disclosable only on a finding of larger public interest. In R. K. Jain v. Union of India, decided on 16 April 2013 by G. S. Singhvi and S. J. Mukhopadhaya JJ, the information sought was the file on follow-up action on a confidential report; the Court treated it as third-party information and remitted the matter to the Chief Information Commissioner to apply the Section 11 third-party procedure and decide whether disclosure served the public interest.

The safe statement of the position is therefore narrow. An appraisal report is not automatically disclosable to a third party; it is treated as personal or third-party information, and disclosure to anyone other than the officer reported upon requires the Section 11 procedure and a public interest finding.

Changes since 2020

Nothing since 2020 has altered the form, the ten-point scale or the weightages; the changes are to the calendar, to the mode of filing, and to the consolidation of the promotion committee instructions.

As of August 2026 the operative combination is the Office Memorandum dated 23 July 2009 for the form, the grading and the weightages; the Office Memorandum dated 14 May 2009 for disclosure and representation; the Office Memorandum dated 13 April 2010 for the quasi-judicial disposal of representations; and the Office Memorandum dated 9 April 2025 for the calendar. No 8th Central Pay Commission material touches the appraisal system.

Common errors

“Outstanding must be justified in the pen picture.” The justification requirement attaches to grades of 9 or 10, and to grades of 1 or 2, not to the Outstanding band, which opens at 8.

“The self-appraisal is due by 15 April.” Out of date from the reporting year 2024-25. It is 15 May, with auto-forward on 16 May.

“The confidential report became the APAR in 2007.” The All India Services moved to the statutory performance appraisal report on 14 March 2007. The central civil services confidential report became the APAR on 14 May 2009, from the reporting year 2008-09.

“The first APAR year was 2009-10.” The first APAR year and the first disclosed year was 2008-09. The first year on the numerical format was 2009-10.

“Sukhdev Singh diluted Dev Dutt.” A three-judge bench approved Dev Dutt and declared the contrary line, Satya Narain Shukla and K. M. Mishra, not to be good law.

“The promotion committee considers the five years preceding the vacancy year.” It considers the five years preceding the T-2 year. For the vacancy year 2019 those are 2016-17 back to 2012-13.

“The committee must accept the overall grade.” It is directed not to be guided merely by the overall grading, and must give reasons where its assessment differs.

“Every report has an accepting authority.” One exists only where the cadre has prescribed it, which is why Annexure III carries two disclosure dates.

“Any three months on the post qualifies the reporting officer.” Earned leave beyond 15 days is deducted when the three months are computed.

“The integrity column must be resolved within a fixed period.” No time limit exists; the instruction is to watch the officer’s conduct for a further period.

“A manually filed report is still valid for an IAS or IPS officer.” Not since 16 June 2017. Rule 7B makes a report filed manually without government approval non est.

“Very Good means a score of 8.” Very Good is 6.0 to below 8.0. A score of 8 and above is Outstanding.

“The appraisal runs on the calendar year.” The reporting year is the financial year. It is the vacancy year for promotion purposes that moved to the calendar year, from 2018.

“A poor grading stops the annual increment.” It does not. The increment moves the employee one cell down the level under Rule 9 of the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016 on the date fixed by Rule 10, and it is withheld only as a minor penalty under Rule 11(iv) of the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965.

“An uncommunicated entry can never be used against an employee.” It cannot be used by a departmental promotion committee, under Abhijit Ghosh Dastidar. It can be taken into consideration at a review under Fundamental Rule 56(j), under Baikuntha Nath Das v. Chief District Medical Officer, Baripada, (1992) 2 SCC 299.

“A grading can be taken straight to the tribunal.” Section 20(1) of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985 keeps the applicant at the departmental stage until the representation is decided or six months have run without a decision.

Related Articles

• Modified Assured Career Progression
• MACP benchmark
• MACP versus promotion
• Promotion
• Departmental promotion committee
• Empanelment
• Sealed cover procedure
• SPARROW
• Annual confidential report
• Adverse remarks
• Reporting officer
• Probation in the central government
• Probation reports
• Confirmation in service
• Seniority
• Departmental inquiry
• Charge sheet and articles of charge
• Major versus minor penalty proceedings
• Suspension
• Appeal, review and revision under the CCS (CCA) Rules
• CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965
• CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964
• Article 311
• Article 309
• Central Administrative Tribunal
• Vigilance clearance
• Immovable property return
• Premature retirement
• Compulsory retirement
• Retirement age in the central government
• Deputation in the central government
• All India Services
• Central Secretariat Service
• Union Public Service Commission
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Right to Information Act
• Pay matrix
• Grade pay
• Pay fixation on promotion
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021
• Central armed police forces
• Earned leave
• Child care leave
• Study leave
• Annual increment
• Withholding of increment

External references

• Department of Personnel and Training, All India Services performance appraisal page, with the consolidated rules and amendment notifications: dopt.gov.in/ais-performance-appraisal
• All India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007, updated text with Schedules 1 to 3: dopt.gov.in
• Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2005-Estt.(A)(Pt-II) dated 14 May 2009 on renaming and disclosure: documents.doptcirculars.nic.in
• Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2010-Estt.A dated 13 April 2010 on quasi-judicial disposal of representations: documents.doptcirculars.nic.in
• Office Memorandum No. 21011/10/2025-PP(A-II) dated 9 April 2025, the current Annexure III calendar: dopt.gov.in
• Department of Personnel and Training, Guidelines on Departmental Promotion Committees dated 22 July 2024: doptcirculars.nic.in
• Office Memorandum No. 22011/4/2013-Estt.(D) dated 8 May 2017 on the reckoning years and the crucial date: documents.doptcirculars.nic.in
• National Informatics Centre, SPARROW under the eOffice suite: services.eoffice.gov.in/sparrow-page.php

References

1. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2005-Estt.(A)(Pt-II) dated 14 May 2009, “Maintenance and preparation of Annual Performance Appraisal Reports, communication of all entries for fairness and transparency in public administration”.
2. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2005-Estt.(A)(Pt-II) dated 23 July 2009, with Annexure I (grading guidelines and bands), Annexure II (the format) and Annexure III (the time schedule).
3. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 21011/1/2010-Estt.A dated 13 April 2010.
4. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 21011/10/2025-PP(A-II) dated 9 April 2025, revised Annexure III applicable from the reporting year 2024-25.
5. All India Services (Performance Appraisal Report) Rules, 2007, G.S.R. 197(E) dated 14 March 2007, as amended by G.S.R. 596(E) dated 16 June 2017 and G.S.R. 519(E) dated 23 July 2019.
6. Department of Personnel and Training, Guidelines on Departmental Promotion Committees, Estt.(D), dated 22 July 2024.
7. Department of Personnel and Training, consolidated instructions on premature retirement in the public interest, Office Memorandum No. 25013/03/2019-Estt.A-IV dated 28 August 2020.
8. Baikuntha Nath Das v. Chief District Medical Officer, Baripada, (1992) 2 SCC 299, decided 19 February 1992 (uncommunicated adverse remarks and compulsory retirement).
9. U.P. Jal Nigam v. Prabhat Chandra Jain, (1996) 2 SCC 363, decided 31 January 1996 (downgrading between positive gradings).
10. Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, Sections 19, 20 and 21 (application to the Central Administrative Tribunal, exhaustion of departmental remedies and limitation).
11. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 22011/4/2013-Estt.(D) dated 8 May 2017; Office Memorandum No. 35034/7/97-Estt.(D) dated 8 February 2002; Office Memorandum No. 22011/3/2007-Estt.(D) dated 18 February 2008; Office Memorandum No. 22011/5/2013-Estt.(D) dated 9 May 2014; Office Memorandum No. 22011/4/2007-Estt.(D) dated 28 April 2014.
12. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 35034/3/2015-Estt.(D) dated 28 September 2016 and the consolidated Modified Assured Career Progression guidelines dated 22 October 2019.
13. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 22011/4/91-Estt.(A) dated 14 September 1992 on the sealed cover procedure.
14. Dev Dutt v. Union of India, (2008) 8 SCC 725; Abhijit Ghosh Dastidar v. Union of India, (2009) 16 SCC 146; Sukhdev Singh v. Union of India, (2013) 9 SCC 566; Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, (2013) 1 SCC 212.