CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972

The Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972 are the statutory code, made by the President under the proviso to Article 309 of the Constitution and administered by the Department of Personnel and Training, that governs leave for central government civil servants. They were notified as S.O. 940 dated 8 April 1972, run to 66 rules across seven chapters, and provide 15 distinct kinds of leave, from earned leave under Rule 26 to study leave under Rules 50 to 63.

The text in force is the DoPT consolidation updated as on 24 September 2024, which carries every amending notification inline against the rule it changed. That consolidation is what this article is written against. Nine of the 66 numbered rules are dead: Rules 18, 35, 36, 37, 45, 46, 57, 58 and 59 stand deleted or omitted, and their numbers were never reused, so a rule number cited in an older Office Memorandum may point at nothing in the current text.

This is the hub for the leave cluster on salary-calculator.in. It sets out the rule map chapter by chapter, who the rules apply to and the eleven categories Rule 2 excludes, the general conditions in Rules 7 to 25 that decide how leave is applied for and sanctioned, the full taxonomy of 15 leave heads with the quantum and pay on each, the four leave-salary bases, the retirement provisions in Rules 38 to 39-D, and the amendments that changed the current position.

Where a head has its own detailed article, this page states the rule and links across rather than repeating the detail: earned leave, half pay leave, extraordinary leave, child care leave, maternity leave, vacation department leave, Leave Travel Concession and leave encashment each carry the working detail.

The rule map: 66 rules in seven chapters

The CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972 are numbered 1 to 66 and grouped into seven chapters, with nine lettered rules inserted by later amendment, two Schedules and ten Forms. Knowing which chapter a question falls into resolves most citation errors, because the rules that decide entitlement sit in different chapters from the rules that decide sanction.

The nine lettered rules are Rule 38-A (encashment of earned leave with the Leave Travel Concession), Rules 39-A to 39-D (cash equivalent of leave salary on death, invalidation, death of the servant and absorption in a public sector undertaking), and Rules 43-A, 43-AA, 43-B and 43-C (paternity leave, paternity leave for child adoption, child adoption leave and child care leave). Every one of them was inserted after 1972, and each carries its own notification date in the consolidated text.

The First Schedule, referred to in Rule 3(c), lists the authorities competent to grant each kind of leave, running from the Ministry or Department of the Central Government down to any subordinate authority to which the power is delegated. The Second Schedule, referred to in Rule 3(h), carries the ten Forms, of which Form 1 is the leave application under Rule 14 and Form 2 is the leave account under Rule 15.

Rule 66 explains why the rulebook exists in this form. On commencement, every rule, regulation or order, including any Office Memorandum, that was in force immediately before and that provided for a matter contained in these rules ceased to operate. Leave earned or granted under the old rules was saved and deemed to have accrued under the corresponding new provision. That is how the scattered leave provisions of the Fundamental Rules and the Civil Service Regulations were replaced by one consolidated code.

Who the rules apply to, and the eleven exclusions in Rule 2

Rule 2 applies the CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972 to government servants appointed to the civil services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union, save as otherwise provided in the rules themselves. The armed forces are outside that opening description rather than carved out of it, and several rules exclude a military officer by name from a particular head.

The exclusions are a closed list of eleven categories in Rule 2(a) to (k):

Two of these matter more than the rest in practice. Clause (f) puts the All India Services, which is the IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service, under the All India Services (Leave) Rules, 1955 instead, so an officer of those services reading a rule number here is reading the wrong rulebook. Clause (k) means that an officer coming into a central ministry on deputation from a State Government for a limited duration continues on the leave rules of the lending government, not on these.

Clauses (d) and (e) are outright exclusions, not a modified application. Rule 6 deals separately with the position of a servant who is transferred to an industrial establishment while these rules apply to him, and Rule 5 with a servant transferred from a service or post governed by other leave rules.

Leave is not a right: the general conditions in Rules 7 to 13

Rule 7 is the framing rule of the entire code. Leave cannot be claimed as of right, and where the exigencies of the public service so require, the authority competent to grant leave may refuse or revoke leave of any description. Nothing later in the rulebook softens this: an entitlement under Rule 26 or Rule 43-C establishes what may be granted, not what must be.

Rule 8 places the choice of head with the sanctioning authority rather than the applicant. The authority decides the kind of leave granted and may substitute a different kind from the one applied for. Rule 10 then allows a grant to be revisited after the event: one kind of leave may be commuted retrospectively into another at the servant’s written request, within entitlement, with the leave salary adjusted. That is the mechanism by which a hospitalisation first covered by extraordinary leave is regularised as half pay leave once the medical certificate and the balance are settled.

Rule 9 makes leave at credit lapse on dismissal, removal or resignation. Rule 11 permits any kind of leave to be combined with any other kind, subject to each head’s own spell limit, which is what allows commuted leave to run into half pay leave or child care leave to be taken in continuation of maternity leave.

Rule 12 sets the outer limit on any absence. Sub-rule (1) bars a grant of leave of any kind for a continuous period exceeding five years. Sub-rule (2) deems a servant who remains absent from duty for a continuous period exceeding five years, otherwise than on foreign service, to have resigned from government service. That consequence carries three qualifications, and all three are load-bearing: the President may determine otherwise in view of the exceptional circumstances of the case, a reasonable opportunity to explain the reasons for the absence must be given before sub-rule (2) is invoked, and the second proviso, inserted by DoPT Notification No. 18017/1/2014-Estt.(L) dated 3 April 2018, excludes any case where the leave was applied for on a medical certificate in connection with a disability. A long disability absence therefore does not deem a resignation. The five-year cap connects to the technical resignation and break-in-service questions, but only where none of the three qualifications applies.

Rule 13 bars a government servant on leave, including leave preparatory to retirement, from taking up any service or employment elsewhere, or setting up private professional practice as an accountant, consultant, legal or medical practitioner, without previous sanction of the President where the employment lies outside India, or of the appointing authority where it lies in India. Limited private practice, casual literary work and service as an examiner, where already permitted, are outside the bar. Remuneration for examiner work is a fee under FR 9(6-A) rather than pay, so it remains subject to the sanction requirement in SR 11 and Rule 15 of the CCS (Conduct) Rules, and to the crediting of one third of any amount above Rs. 5,000 in a financial year under SR 12.

Applying for leave, the leave account and returning to duty: Rules 14 to 25

Chapter III is the procedural machinery, and it is the part most often skipped in summaries of the rulebook. It decides who may sign an application, who keeps the account, when leave starts and stops, and what an overstayal costs.

Rule 14 requires every application for leave or for extension of leave to be made in Form 1 to the authority competent to grant leave. A proviso inserted by DoPT Notification No. 18017/1/2014-Estt.(L) dated 3 April 2018 allows the application or medical certificate to be signed and submitted on behalf of a servant who is unable to do so because of a disability, by the spouse, by a parent where the servant is unmarried, by an adult child, brother or sister, or by a person assigned limited guardianship under Section 14 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. It is then deemed to have been made by the servant himself.

Rule 15 fixes who maintains the account, and it is not the Drawing and Disbursing Officer. A leave account is maintained in Form 2 for each government servant by the Audit Officer in the case of gazetted servants, and by the head of office or an officer authorised by him in the case of non-gazetted servants. Where a gazetted servant’s pay is drawn and disbursed by the head of office, that head of office maintains the account.

Rule 16 bars a grant of leave until a report on its admissibility has been obtained from the authority maintaining the leave account, and requires the sanction order to state the balance of earned leave and half pay leave at credit. Where the admissibility report would be unduly delayed, sub-rule (2) allows a provisional sanction for not more than 60 days on the basis of available information, subject to later verification, and allows the Audit Officer to issue a provisional leave salary slip for the same period. Where leave preparatory to retirement or a Rule 39 cash payment is involved, an undertaking for recovery of any excess leave salary must be taken.

Rule 17 is short and absolute. Leave shall not be granted to a government servant whom a competent punishing authority has decided to dismiss, remove or compulsorily retire from government service. Rule 19 governs the grant of leave on a medical certificate and prescribes the certifying authority for gazetted and non-gazetted servants; Rule 20 deals with a servant whom a medical authority has reported to have no reasonable prospect of returning to duty, and provides that leave is not necessarily to be refused to such a servant, with grants of up to twelve months at a time where the medical authority cannot say with certainty that the servant will never again be fit.

Rule 21 fixes commencement and termination: except as provided in Rule 22, leave ordinarily begins on the day the transfer of charge is effected and ends on the day preceding that on which charge is resumed. Rule 22 lets holidays be prefixed and suffixed to leave other than leave on medical certificate, so that a servant is deemed permitted to leave his station at the close of the day before a holiday or series of holidays and to return on the day following, unless permission is specifically withheld for administrative reasons.

Rule 23 governs recall, and it removes the discretion a reader might expect. Where a servant is recalled to duty before the expiry of his leave, the recall shall be treated as compulsory in all cases. A servant recalled from leave in India is treated as on duty from the date he starts for the station he is ordered to, and draws travelling allowance for the journey and leave salary until he joins his post at the rate he would have drawn but for the recall. A servant recalled from leave out of India counts the voyage as duty for leave calculation and receives a free passage to India, with refund of his outward passage where he has not completed half his leave or three months, whichever is shorter.

Rule 24 controls the return. A servant on leave shall not return to duty before the expiry of the sanctioned period unless permitted by the authority that granted the leave, and a servant on leave preparatory to retirement is precluded from returning save with the consent of the appointing authority. A servant who took leave on medical certificate may not return until he produces a fitness certificate in Form 5, obtained from a Medical Board in the case of a gazetted officer except where the leave was for three months or less. Sub-rule (4) adds a point rarely stated: a servant returning from leave is not entitled, in the absence of specific orders, to resume as a matter of course the post he held before going on leave. He reports his return and awaits orders.

Rule 25 prices an overstayal precisely, and the price is not dies non. Unless the competent authority extends the leave, a servant who remains absent after the end of his leave is entitled to no leave salary for that period, and the period is debited against his leave account as though it were half pay leave to the extent such leave is due, with the excess treated as extraordinary leave. Sub-rule (2) adds that wilful absence from duty after the expiry of leave renders the servant liable to disciplinary action under the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965.

The 15 kinds of leave

The rulebook provides 15 distinct kinds of leave: five ordinary kinds in Chapter IV, nine special kinds in Chapter V, and study leave in Chapter VI. Rules 33 and 34 are often miscounted as heads; they are not kinds of leave but rules about which categories of person draw the heads above, and they are set out separately below.

Earned leave in a non-vacation department

Earned leave is the head a servant accumulates and encashes. Rule 26(1)(a)(i) credits the leave account in advance with 15 days on 1 January and 15 days on 1 July of every calendar year, and Rule 26(1)(b) carries the balance forward subject to a maximum of 300 days. A proviso protects the advance credit where the balance stands above 285 days but not above 300: the 15 days is kept separately, adjusted first against leave taken during the half-year, and only the residue credited at the close of the half-year.

Rule 26(2) caps a single spell at 180 days for a servant employed in India. Rule 26(3) is the exception the spell limit is usually quoted without: a servant in Group A or Group B service may be granted earned leave exceeding 180 days but not exceeding 300 days if the leave, or any part of it, is spent outside India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan, with the portion spent in India not exceeding 180 days in the aggregate.

Rule 27 handles the arithmetic. Earned leave accrues at 2.5 days for each completed calendar month of service in the half-year of appointment, and at the same rate up to the date of retirement, resignation or death in the half-year those events fall in. Rule 27(3) reduces the advance credit at the commencement of the next half-year by one-tenth of any extraordinary leave availed or period treated as dies non in the preceding half-year, subject to a maximum of 15 days. Rule 27(4) rounds fractions of a day to the nearest day. The earned leave article carries the credit mechanics and worked examples.

Earned leave in a vacation department

Rule 28 was substituted by the CCS (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2018 on 11 December 2018, and the position it replaced is still widely repeated. Under the current rule, the leave account of a servant serving in a Vacation Department is credited in advance with earned leave in two instalments of five days each on 1 January and 1 July, which is a base of 10 days a year, whether or not the vacation is taken.

Rule 28(1)(b) adds, in any year in which the servant avails a portion of the vacation, additional earned leave in the proportion that 20 days bears to the vacation not taken, with the total credited for the year not exceeding 30 days. Rule 28(1)(c) provides that in any year in which no vacation is availed, earned leave is as per Rule 26, which is the full 30 days. A servant who takes the whole vacation earns 10 days, one who takes half earns 20, one who takes none earns 30. The accumulation ceiling under Rule 28(3) is the same 300 days. The vacation department leave article carries the sliding scale and the treatment of a servant ordered to forgo the vacation.

The half pay leave family

Three heads hang off the half pay leave account, and two of them draw it down.

Half pay leave, under Rule 29 as substituted on 11 December 2018, is credited in advance in two instalments of ten days each on 1 January and 1 July, which is 20 days a year, and may be granted on medical certificate or on private affairs. It has no accumulation ceiling, so it builds up across a career. Two limits are worth stating. A servant serving in a Vacation Department is excluded from Rule 29 altogether, which is the counterpart of the earned leave that Rule 28 gives such staff instead. And Rule 29(2)(d) reduces the credit at the commencement of the next half-year by one-eighteenth of any period of absence or suspension treated as dies non, subject to a maximum of ten days, which is a different fraction and a different cap from the earned leave rule in Rule 27(3).

Commuted leave, under Rule 30, is half pay leave taken at full pay on a medical certificate. It may not exceed half the amount of half pay leave due, it requires the sanctioning authority to be satisfied that there is a reasonable prospect of return to duty, and twice the amount granted is debited against the half pay leave account. Rule 30(1-A) adds a separate route without a medical certificate: up to 180 days of half pay leave may be commuted across the entire service where the leave is used for a course of study certified to be in the public interest. Where a servant granted commuted leave resigns or retires voluntarily without returning to duty, Rule 30(2) converts the commuted leave into half pay leave and recovers the difference, unless the retirement is on grounds of ill-health incapacitating him for further service or he dies.

Leave not due, under Rule 31, is half pay leave granted in advance on a medical certificate to a servant in permanent or quasi-permanent employ, limited to 360 days across the entire service, to the half pay leave he is likely to earn afterwards, and to a reasonable prospect of return to duty. Rule 31(1-A) extends it to temporary servants suffering from tuberculosis, leprosy, cancer or mental illness, for the same 360 days, subject to a minimum of one year’s service and to the post being likely to last until his return. The leave salary is recovered where the servant does not return, with the recovery waived on retirement by reason of ill-health, on death, and on premature retirement under Fundamental Rule 56(j) or 56(l).

Extraordinary leave

Extraordinary leave, under Rule 32, carries no leave salary. It is granted where no other leave is admissible, or where the servant applies for it in writing even though other leave is due.

The statement that extraordinary leave has no ceiling is true only for a permanent or quasi-permanent servant. Rule 32(2) caps it, for everyone else, on any one occasion at three months; six months where the servant has completed one year of continuous service and the request is supported by a medical certificate; eighteen months where a servant with one year’s service is under treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis, tuberculosis of any other part of the body, leprosy, cancer or mental illness in a recognised institution; and twenty-four months where the leave is for studies certified to be in the public interest and the servant has completed three years of continuous service. Each higher limit is inclusive of the three months under clause (a), not additional to it. The President may determine otherwise in view of the exceptional circumstances of a case.

Rule 32(3) requires a bond in Form 6, supported by two permanent government servants as sureties, where extraordinary leave is granted in relaxation of the study limit in clause (e), undertaking to refund the expenditure with interest if the servant does not return or quits within three years of returning. Rule 32(4) allows the Head of Department to relax sub-rule (2) for a servant belonging to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes attending a notified pre-examination training course. Rule 32(5) treats two spells of extraordinary leave intervened by any other kind of leave as one continuous spell, for the purposes of sub-rule (2) specifically. Rule 32(6) allows the competent authority to commute retrospectively periods of absence without leave into extraordinary leave, which is a different power from the Rule 10 power to convert one kind of leave into another. The extraordinary leave article carries the ceilings table and the qualifying-service consequences.

Probationers, apprentices and the re-employed

Rules 33 and 34 are not kinds of leave. They decide which of the heads above a person in a particular status may draw, and both are commonly summarised in a way the text does not support.

Rule 33(1)(a) entitles a probationer to leave under these rules if he had held his post substantively otherwise than on probation. Rule 33(1)(b) bars any leave granted to a probationer whose services it is proposed to terminate from extending beyond the expiry of the sanctioned or extended probation period, or beyond any earlier date of termination. Rule 33(2) entitles a person appointed to a post on probation to leave as a temporary or a permanent servant according as the appointment is against a temporary or a permanent post, with a proviso giving permanent-servant treatment to a person who already holds a lien on a permanent post.

Rule 33(3) is the one most often misstated. An apprentice is entitled to leave on medical certificate at leave salary equivalent to half pay, for not more than one month in any year of apprenticeship, and to extraordinary leave under Rule 32. That is the whole entitlement, not the leave of a permanent servant. Rule 43-A(1) is the single express extension: a male government servant including an apprentice may be granted the 15 days of paternity leave.

Rule 34 is one sentence with a large consequence. In the case of a person re-employed after retirement, the provisions of these rules apply as if he had entered government service for the first time on the date of his re-employment. His leave account starts at nil on that date and earned leave accrues from it. Rule 40(7)(c) computes the leave salary on leave earned during re-employment on the pay drawn, exclusive of pension and the pension equivalent of other retirement benefits.

Maternity, paternity, adoption and child care leave

None of the family-related heads is debited to the leave account, and each has its own eligibility condition that does not carry across to the others.

Maternity leave under Rule 43(1) is 180 days from the date of commencement, for a female government servant, including an apprentice, with fewer than two surviving children, at leave salary equal to the pay drawn immediately before proceeding on leave. Rule 43(3) is separate and its condition is different: maternity leave not exceeding 45 days may be granted in a case of miscarriage including abortion, on a medical certificate under Rule 19, irrespective of the number of surviving children, subject to a maximum of 45 days across the entire service. The fewer-than-two-children condition applies to the 180-day head only. Rule 43(4)(b) allows leave of the kind due and admissible, including commuted leave up to 60 days and leave not due, up to a maximum of two years in continuation of maternity leave, without the medical certificate that Rules 30 and 31 would otherwise require. Rule 43(6), inserted by DoPT Notification No. A-24011/21/2023-ESTT-Leave dated 18 June 2024, extends 180 days of maternity leave in a surrogacy case to the surrogate as well as to a commissioning mother with fewer than two surviving children, where either or both are government servants.

Paternity leave under Rule 43-A is 15 days at full pay for a male government servant, including an apprentice, with fewer than two surviving children, during the confinement of his wife for childbirth, which means from up to 15 days before to up to six months from the date of delivery. Rule 43-A(5) lapses the leave if it is not availed within that window, and a Note states that it shall not normally be refused under any circumstances. Rule 43-A(6) extends it to a commissioning father in a surrogacy case. Rule 43-AA gives the same 15 days to a father, and Rule 43-B gives a female servant 180 days of child adoption leave, in each case on accepting a child below one year in pre-adoption foster care or on validly adopting such a child, the foster-care limb having been added to both rules by G.S.R. 374(E) dated 15 May 2023 with a proviso debiting the leave already availed if the foster care does not end in a valid adoption. The maternity leave, paternity leave and child adoption leave articles carry the working detail.

Child care leave under Rule 43-C is the largest single pool in the rulebook: a maximum of 730 days during the entire service, for taking care of the two eldest surviving children. It is available to a female government servant and to a single male government servant, meaning an unmarried, widower or divorcee servant, which is a category the head is often described without. A child means one below 18 years, or an offspring of any age with a minimum disability of 40%. Rule 43-C(4) pays 100% of salary for the first 365 days and 80% for the next 365. Rule 43-C(3) limits grants to three spells in a calendar year, extended to six for a single female servant, and to a minimum of five days at a time; DoPT Office Memorandum No. A-24011/5/2024-ESTT-Leave dated 29 July 2024 empowers sanctioning authorities to relax that by up to three further spells in a year where a child is admitted to hospital as an inpatient. Rule 43-C(8), inserted on 18 June 2024, extends the head to a commissioning mother through surrogacy with fewer than two surviving children. The child care leave article carries the current position.

Work related illness and injury leave, and seamen’s sick leave

Work related illness and injury leave under Rule 44 was substituted by the CCS (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2018, G.S.R. 1209(E) dated 11 December 2018, with a clarificatory DoPT Office Memorandum following on 30 August 2019. The same amendment omitted the earlier Rule 45, special disability leave for accidental injury, and Rule 46, hospital leave, so neither is a live head.

Rule 44 grants full pay and allowances for the entire period of hospitalisation to every employee, permanent or temporary, whose illness or injury is attributable to or aggravated in the performance of official duties or in consequence of official position. Beyond hospitalisation the rule splits three ways, and the two service-specific branches are usually left out. A government servant other than a military officer draws full pay and allowances for the six months immediately following hospitalisation and half pay for the twelve months beyond, with the half pay period commutable to full pay against a corresponding debit of half pay leave. An officer of the Central Armed Police Forces draws full pay and allowances for six months following hospitalisation and full pay only for the next 24 months. Personnel below the rank of officer in the Central Armed Police Forces draw full pay and allowances with no limit on the period. Rule 44(4) adds the cost: no earned leave or half pay leave is credited during a period spent on this head.

Seamen’s sick leave under Rule 47 gives a government servant serving as an officer, warrant officer or petty officer on a government vessel leave salary equal to full pay for not more than six weeks while under treatment for sickness or injury, on the vessel or in hospital. It is refused where a Government Medical Officer certifies malingering, or that the ill-health is due to drunkenness or similar self-indulgence, or to the servant wilfully causing or aggravating the disease or injury. Rule 47(2) allows up to three months at full pay for a seaman disabled in the exercise of his duty, subject to medical certification of the disability, the disability not being due to his own carelessness or inexperience, and the vacancy caused by his absence not being filled.

Special leave connected to an inquiry of sexual harassment

Rule 48 was substituted by DoPT Notification No. 13026/2/2016-Estt.(L) dated 15 March 2017, issued as the Central Civil Services (Leave) Amendment Rules, 2017 under the proviso to Article 309 read with clause (5) of Article 148 of the Constitution, and published as G.S.R. 251(E). It provides that leave up to a period of 90 days may be granted to an aggrieved female government servant on the recommendation of the Internal Committee or the Local Committee, as the case may be, during the pendency of an inquiry under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, and that the leave so granted shall not be debited against her leave account.

Three features distinguish it from every other head. The trigger is a committee recommendation rather than a medical certificate or a personal entitlement, so the Internal Committee constituted under the 2013 Act controls access to it. The leave is over and above whatever the servant is otherwise entitled to, because it is not debited. And it runs only while the inquiry is pending, so it ends with the inquiry rather than on a fixed calendar. It is the statutory route by which a complainant is kept away from the workplace during an inquiry without spending her own leave balance, and it sits alongside the transfer and other interim reliefs under Section 12 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013.

Departmental leave

Rule 49 is the head most often missing from summaries of the rulebook, and it is the only one with its own leave-salary rate. Departmental leave may be granted to Class III government servants, other than Division I staff and clerks, and to Class IV government servants in the Survey of India attached to survey parties with field and recess duties, and to members of the seasonal staff in the Posts and Telegraphs Department whose duties are not continuous but limited to a fixed period each year. It is granted in addition to leave due and admissible, and only to servants whose services are temporarily not required.

During the recess, departmental leave with leave salary is granted by the head of the party or office in the Survey of India, or by an authority not lower than the Divisional Superintendent of Post Offices, and may be extended in special cases by the Surveyor-General, the Postmaster-General or the Director of Posts and Telegraphs up to a maximum of 18 months in all. Outside the recess it may be granted by directors in the Survey of India for not more than six months at a time, in the interests of Government and not at the servant’s request, extendable by the Surveyor-General up to one year in all; leave on a medical certificate is expressly not regarded as granted in the interest of Government.

Rule 49(6)(a) sets the rate. A servant on departmental leave with leave salary is paid leave salary equal to 25% of the salary admissible during earned leave under Rule 40(1), with no allowance other than dearness allowance, a figure fixed by DoPT Notification No. 13012/12/86-Estt.(L) dated 25 March 1989. Payment is monthly for the first six months and thereafter on return to duty, with the accrued amount paid to the heirs if the servant dies on such leave. Rule 49(7) provides that departmental leave does not count as duty and is not debited to the leave account, Rule 49(8) allows it when no leave is due, and Rule 49(9) allows it to be combined with any other kind of leave due. Rule 29(3) is the companion provision: a servant eligible for departmental leave under Rule 49 is entitled to half pay leave of 20 days on completion of 12 months of actual duty.

Study leave

Study leave is the whole of Chapter VI, Rules 50 to 63, and it is the only head with a dedicated chapter. Rule 50 sets the conditions for grant, which turn on the course of study or training being in the public interest. Rule 51 fixes the maximum: ordinarily 12 months at any one time, and 24 months in all during the entire service, inclusive of similar leave for study or training granted under any other rules. For Central Health Service officers acquiring a postgraduate qualification the ceiling is 36 months, subject to a bond under Rule 53(4) to serve the Government for five years after completing the course.

Rules 52 to 56 carry the application, sanction, accounting and leave-salary provisions, Rule 56 fixing the leave salary and Rules 60 to 62 the admissibility of allowances in addition to the study allowance, travelling allowance, and the cost of fees. Rule 63 is the enforcement rule: it governs resignation or retirement after study leave, and non-completion of the course, and is the basis on which the bond is enforced. Rules 57, 58 and 59 stand omitted. The sabbatical leave and study leave articles carry the bond terms and the study allowance rates.

Leave preparatory to retirement, encashment and the Rule 39 family

Rule 38 permits leave preparatory to retirement to the extent of earned leave due, not exceeding 300 days, together with half pay leave due, subject to the leave extending up to and including the date of retirement. The half pay leave component is part of the rule and is routinely dropped when the provision is summarised as a 300-day earned leave entitlement. A Note excludes extraordinary leave from any grant of leave preparatory to retirement. Sub-rules (2) and (3) deal with a servant on foreign service, where the decision to grant or refuse rests with the foreign employer with the concurrence of the lending authority.

Rule 38-A allows a servant to encash up to ten days of earned leave at the time of availing the Leave Travel Concession while in service, on two conditions: a balance of at least 30 days of earned leave must remain at credit after accounting for both the encashment and the leave being availed, and the total encashed across the entire career must not exceed 60 days. The cash equivalent is pay plus dearness allowance on the date of availing the concession, divided by 30, multiplied by the number of days, with no house rent allowance included. Rule 38-A(4) keeps this encashment outside the quantum encashable under Rules 6, 39, 39-A, 39-B, 39-C and 39-D. Rule 38-A(5) requires the entire amount to be refunded with interest at 2% above the Provident Fund rate if the concession is not availed within the time prescribed by the CCS (LTC) Rules, 1988, with the leave credited back.

Rule 39 bars any grant of leave beyond the date of retirement, final cessation of duties, retirement on notice by either side, or resignation. Rule 39(2)(a) requires the competent authority, on a normal-age retirement, to issue an order suo motu granting the cash equivalent of leave salary for both earned leave and half pay leave at credit, subject to a maximum of 300 days. Rules 39-A to 39-D extend the cash equivalent to death in service, invalidation from service, death of the government servant in other circumstances, and permanent absorption in a public sector undertaking or autonomous body. The leave encashment article carries the formula and the income-tax treatment under Section 10(10AA), and the leave encashment calculator computes the figure.

Leave salary: the four pay bases

Rule 40 fixes the pay drawn on each head, and the rulebook resolves to four bases, not three. Rule 40(1) sets the full-pay base as the pay drawn immediately before proceeding on earned leave. Dearness allowance is payable on that leave salary under the dearness allowance orders rather than under Rule 40 itself, which is why the rule text mentions pay alone.

Three rate points sit outside the table. Child care leave in its second year is paid at 80% of salary under Rule 43-C(4), which is neither full pay nor half pay, and was set by the substitution of 11 December 2018. Rule 40(8) reduces the leave salary on any leave other than earned leave, for a person to whom the Employees’ State Insurance Act, 1948 applies, by the benefit payable under that Act for the corresponding period, and Rule 43(2) applies the same reduction to maternity leave; Rule 44(3) makes the parallel reduction for compensation paid under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1923. Rule 40(9) provides for recovery of overdrawn leave salary where a servant retires, resigns, is dismissed or removed, or dies with leave availed in excess of the credit due.

Rule 41 requires leave salary under these rules to be drawn in rupees in India. Rule 42 allows a servant proceeding on leave for a period of not less than 30 days, including a servant on foreign service, an advance in lieu of leave salary up to one month’s pay and allowances admissible on that leave salary, subject to deductions for income tax, provident fund, house rent and recovery of advances.

Interpretation, relaxation and repeal

Rule 64 sends any doubt about the interpretation of the rules to the Government of India in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions for decision. That is the formal basis for the interpretive Office Memoranda that DoPT’s Establishment (Leave) Division issues, and the reason an OM on a leave question carries authority the ordinary reader can rely on.

Rule 65 is the relaxation power. Where a Ministry or Department is satisfied that the operation of any rule causes undue hardship in a particular case, it may by order, for reasons recorded in writing, dispense with or relax the requirement of that rule to the extent and subject to the exceptions and conditions it considers necessary to deal with the case in a just and equitable manner. The proviso requires the concurrence of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. A relaxation is therefore a written, reasoned, case-specific order with central concurrence, not an administrative accommodation.

Rule 66 repeals every rule, regulation or order, including any Office Memorandum, in force immediately before commencement so far as it provided for a matter contained in these rules, and saves everything done, earned, granted or accrued under the old rules by deeming it to have been done under the corresponding new provision.

Amendments that changed the current position

The 1972 rules have been amended many times. Six changes account for most of the difference between the original text and the position an employee works under today.

The earned leave accumulation and encashment ceiling was raised from 240 days to 300 days by DoPT Notification No. 13026/1/99-Estt.(L) dated 18 April 2002. The same notification lifted the companion threshold in the proviso to Rule 26(1)(b) from 225 days to 285. Leave preparatory to retirement under Rule 38 moved from 240 to 300 days separately, by DoPT Notification No. 13026/1/2002-Estt.(L) dated 15 and 16 January 2004.

Maternity leave rose from 135 days to 180 days by DoPT Notification No. 11012/1/2009-Estt.(L) dated 1 December 2009. The 45-day miscarriage head had been inserted earlier, by DoPT Notification No. 13018/7/94-Estt.(L) dated 31 March 1995. Paternity leave was inserted as Rule 43-A by the same 18 April 2002 notification that raised the earned leave ceiling, and child care leave as Rule 43-C by DoPT Notification No. 13018/4/2011-Estt.(L) dated 27 August 2011.

Rule 48 was substituted with special leave connected to an inquiry of sexual harassment by DoPT Notification No. 13026/2/2016-Estt.(L) dated 15 March 2017, four years after the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013 came into force.

The 7th Central Pay Commission changes came through DoPT Notification No. 11020/01/2017-Estt.(L) dated 11 December 2018, issued as the CCS (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2018, G.S.R. 1209(E). That single notification substituted Rule 28 to give vacation department staff a 10-day earned leave base in place of half pay leave, substituted Rule 29 to exclude vacation department staff from half pay leave, split child care leave pay into 100% for the first 365 days and 80% for the next 365 under Rule 43-C(4), and substituted Rule 44 with work related illness and injury leave while omitting Rules 45 and 46. A clarificatory DoPT Office Memorandum followed on 30 August 2019.

Two disability provisions were inserted by DoPT Notification No. 18017/1/2014-Estt.(L) dated 3 April 2018, giving effect to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016: the proviso to Rule 12(2), which stops a long disability absence from being deemed a resignation, and the proviso to Rule 14, which lets a spouse, parent, adult sibling or limited guardian sign the leave application.

The most recent substantive change is DoPT Notification No. A-24011/21/2023-ESTT-Leave dated 18 June 2024, which extended maternity leave to a surrogate and a commissioning mother under Rule 43(6), paternity leave to a commissioning father under Rule 43-A(6), and child care leave to a commissioning mother under Rule 43-C(8).

What the CCS (Leave) Rules do not cover

Four things an employee thinks of as leave are not kinds of leave under these rules, and each is governed elsewhere.

Casual leave is a concession rather than a recognised form of leave. It appears nowhere in the 66 rules, is not debited to any leave account, and the employee is not treated as absent from duty while on it. Because it is not leave under the rules, Rule 11 does not allow it to be combined with any of the heads above. Special casual leave is likewise an executive concession, granted by instruction for purposes such as blood donation, sterilisation and participation in sporting events.

Quarantine leave is a Fundamental Rules and Supplementary Rules category for infection in a servant’s household. It was never carried into the 1972 rules for central government civilians, survives mainly in the service rules of some State governments, and is not an active named entitlement in central government today.

Special maternity leave of 60 days, granted to a female government servant with fewer than two surviving children on the death of a child soon after birth or on a stillbirth, rests on the DoPT Office Memorandum dated 2 September 2022. It is an instruction, not a rule, and no rule number in Chapter V corresponds to it.

The Leave Travel Concession is governed by the CCS (LTC) Rules, 1988, a separate rulebook. Only the earned leave encashment that accompanies it sits in these rules, in Rule 38-A, which is why the 60-day career limit on that encashment appears here rather than in the LTC rules.

Related Articles

• Casual leave
• Special casual leave
• Earned leave
• Vacation department leave
• Half pay leave
• Commuted leave
• Leave not due
• Extraordinary leave
• Work related illness and injury leave (WRIIL)
• Hospital leave
• Special disability leave
• Seamen’s sick leave
• Quarantine leave
• Departmental leave
• Study leave
• Sabbatical leave
• Child care leave
• Maternity leave for central government employees
• Special maternity leave
• Paternity leave
• Child adoption leave
• Leave salary
• Leave preparatory to retirement
• Leave Travel Concession
• Leave encashment
• Leave encashment calculator
• All India Services (Leave) Rules
• Sexual harassment of women at workplace
• Complaints Committee on sexual harassment
• Departmental inquiry
• CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Fundamental Rules
• Supplementary Rules
• All India Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016
• Central government employees in India
• Superannuation
• Technical resignation
• Resignation from government service
• Voluntary retirement
• Premature retirement
• Deputation for central government employees
• Lien
• Probation in central government service
• Confirmation in service
• Seniority
• Qualifying service
• Take-home salary for central government employees
• Dearness allowance
• Basic pay
• Pay matrix
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• Annual increment
• Pay fixation
• Central government pension
• Gratuity for central government employees
• Old Pension Scheme
• National Pension System
• Family pension
• Income tax for government employees
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare

External references

• Department of Personnel and Training
• Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972, consolidated text on the DoPT circulars server
• DoPT Acts and Rules
• DoPT establishment circulars
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare
• The Gazette of India

References

1. Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972 (S.O. 940, dated 8 April 1972), consolidated text maintained by the Department of Personnel and Training, updated as on 24 September 2024: 66 rules in seven chapters, two Schedules and ten Forms.
2. CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 2(a) to (k) (eleven excluded categories), Rule 7 (right to leave), Rule 8 (regulation of the claim), Rule 10 (commutation of one kind into another), Rule 11 (combination), Rule 12 (maximum continuous leave, with the proviso inserted 3 April 2018), Rule 13 (outside employment while on leave).
3. CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 14 (application in Form 1), Rule 15 (leave account in Form 2), Rule 16 (verification of title and provisional sanction up to 60 days), Rule 17 (leave not to be granted where dismissal, removal or compulsory retirement is decided), Rule 21 (commencement and termination), Rule 23(3) (recall compulsory in all cases), Rule 24 (return from leave), Rule 25 (absence after expiry of leave).
4. CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rules 26 to 32 (earned leave, calculation, vacation departments, half pay leave, commuted leave, leave not due, extraordinary leave), Rule 33 (probationers, persons on probation and apprentices) and Rule 34 (persons re-employed after retirement).
5. CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rules 38, 38-A and 39 to 39-D (leave preparatory to retirement, encashment with the Leave Travel Concession, and the cash equivalent of leave salary), and Rules 40 to 42 (leave salary, drawal and advance).
6. CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rules 43 to 43-C (maternity, paternity, adoption and child care leave), Rule 44 (work related illness and injury leave), Rule 47 (seamen’s sick leave), Rule 48 (special leave connected to an inquiry of sexual harassment), Rule 49 (departmental leave) and Rules 50 to 63 (study leave).
7. DoPT Notification No. 13026/2/2016-Estt.(L) dated 15 March 2017, the Central Civil Services (Leave) Amendment Rules, 2017 (G.S.R. 251(E)), substituting Rule 48 with special leave of up to 90 days connected to an inquiry of sexual harassment.
8. CCS (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2018, G.S.R. 1209(E) dated 11 December 2018 (DoPT Notification No. 11020/01/2017-Estt.(L)), substituting Rules 28, 29, 43-C(4) and 44 and omitting Rules 45 and 46, with clarificatory DoPT Office Memorandum dated 30 August 2019.
9. DoPT Notification No. 18017/1/2014-Estt.(L) dated 3 April 2018, inserting the disability provisos to Rule 12(2) and Rule 14, giving effect to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.
10. DoPT Notification No. 13026/1/99-Estt.(L) dated 18 April 2002 (earned leave accumulation and encashment ceiling raised from 240 to 300 days, and the Rule 26(1)(b) threshold from 225 to 285) and DoPT Notification No. 13026/1/2002-Estt.(L) dated 15 and 16 January 2004 (leave preparatory to retirement raised to 300 days).
11. DoPT Notification No. A-24011/21/2023-ESTT-Leave dated 18 June 2024 (surrogacy: maternity leave under Rule 43(6), paternity leave under Rule 43-A(6), child care leave under Rule 43-C(8)) and DoPT Office Memorandum No. A-24011/5/2024-ESTT-Leave dated 29 July 2024 (relaxation of the three-spell limit on child care leave where a child is hospitalised).
12. DoPT Notification No. 13012/12/86-Estt.(L) dated 25 March 1989, fixing departmental leave salary at 25% of the earned leave rate under Rule 49(6)(a).