Doctrine of pleasure

The doctrine of pleasure is the rule, enacted in Article 310(1) of the Constitution of India, that every member of the defence services, the civil services of the Union and the all-India services, and every holder of a civil post, holds office during the pleasure of the President, or, in a State, of the Governor. It gives a government servant no legal right to continue in office. The rule applies “Except as expressly provided by this Constitution”, and Article 311 is the provision that cuts it down for civil servants, by requiring an authority of sufficient rank and an inquiry before any dismissal, removal or reduction in rank.

The doctrine came to India from English law, where the servants of the Crown held office at its pleasure and could be dismissed at will. It entered Indian statute through section 96B, inserted into the Government of India Act 1915 by the Government of India Act 1919, and through section 240 of the Government of India Act 1935, and Article 310 adopted the 1935 wording almost word for word. The Constitution Bench in Union of India v. Tulsiram Patel, (1985) 3 SCC 398, treats the doctrine as a rule of public policy, not a surviving royal prerogative, and that reading governs how it is applied today.

For a central government employee the doctrine explains how service law is built. Service rules are statutory and can be changed unilaterally, because the relationship is one of status and not of contract. A rule made under Article 309 cannot enlarge the protection beyond what the Constitution gives, or dilute what Article 311 gives. Every order that ends a service, from a dismissal to the discharge of a probationer or a premature retirement under FR 56(j), is an exercise of the pleasure through a named authority, and the pension that follows depends on which power was used.

Text of Article 310

Article 310 sits in Chapter I of Part XIV of the Constitution, headed “Services”, under the marginal heading “Tenure of office of persons serving the Union or a State”. Clause (1) states the rule:

(1) Except as expressly provided by this Constitution, every person who is a member of a defence service or of a civil service of the Union or of an all-India service or holds any post connected with defence or any civil post under the Union holds office during the pleasure of the President, and every person who is a member of a civil service of a State or holds any civil post under a State holds office during the pleasure of the Governor of the State.

Clause (2) creates the one monetary qualification:

(2) Notwithstanding that a person holding a civil post under the Union or a State holds office during the pleasure of the President or, as the case may be, of the Governor of the State, any contract under which a person, not being a member of a defence service or of an all-India service or of a civil service of the Union or a State, is appointed under this Constitution to hold such a post may, if the President or the Governor, as the case may be, deems it necessary in order to secure the services of a person having special qualifications, provide for the payment to him of compensation, if before the expiration of an agreed period that post is abolished or he is, for reasons not connected with any misconduct on his part, required to vacate that post.

The text above is the article as printed in the Ministry of Law and Justice edition of the Constitution as on 1 May 2024, pages 173 and 174. As enacted on 26 January 1950, Article 310 also referred to the Rajpramukh of a Part B State; the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956 omitted those words with effect from 1 November 1956, the same change it made to Article 309.

Who holds office at pleasure

Article 310(1) reaches further than Article 311. It names five classes on the Union side and two on the State side, and it includes the defence services, which Article 311 leaves out.

The All India Services are named on the Union side, so an Indian Administrative Service or Indian Police Service officer serving a State cadre holds office at the pleasure of the President, not the Governor. The classification turns on the service or the post, not on permanence: a probationer, a temporary servant and an officiating incumbent all hold a civil post and so hold it at pleasure, which is the premise the Article 311 cases on disguised punishment build on.

Employees of public sector undertakings, statutory corporations, nationalised banks and autonomous bodies do not hold civil posts under the Union or a State. They hold posts under a separate juristic person, so their tenure is governed by the standing orders, service regulations or contract of that body.

Origin in English law

In England every public officer and servant of the Crown held appointment at the pleasure of the Crown, and could be dismissed at will without cause being assigned. Tulsiram Patel states the English position in those terms, drawing on Halsbury’s Laws of England, Fourth Edition, Volume 8, paragraphs 1106 and 1162, and records the Latin form of the tenure as durante bene placito, “during good pleasure”.

Three nineteenth-century cases fixed the rule. In Shenton v. Smith, [1895] AC 229, the Privy Council founded it on the difficulty that would otherwise be met in dismissing those whose continuance in office was detrimental to the State. In Dunn v. The Queen, [1896] 1 QB 116, the Court of Appeal held that holding office at the Crown’s pleasure is an implied term of every contract of service with the Crown, civil or military, except where the law provides otherwise. Lord Herschell put the reason as the public interest: such employment being for the good of the public, “it is essential for the public good that it should be capable of being determined at the pleasure of the Crown”.

In Gould v. Stuart, [1896] AC 575, the Privy Council added the qualification that matters for India. Where regulations establishing a civil service restrict the power to dismiss, those regulations are deemed to be made for the public good. In the United Kingdom, where Parliament is sovereign, the pleasure is subject to whatever legislation expressly provides otherwise.

Statutory history in India, 1919 to 1950

The doctrine reached India by statute, and each re-enactment widened the protection around it.

Section 96B was the first statute to provide that civil servants in India held office during His Majesty’s pleasure, and its only fetter on that pleasure concerned the authority that could dismiss. Section 240 of the 1935 Act changed the qualifying words from “Subject to the provisions of this Act and the rules made thereunder” to “Except as expressly provided by this Act”, dropped the reference to rules, and added the reasonable-opportunity safeguard in section 240(3), which the 1919 Act did not have. Its marginal note was “Tenure of office of persons employed in civil capacities in India”.

Article 310(1) adopts the phrase from section 240, and Tulsiram Patel draws the consequence: the only fetter on the pleasure is one the Constitution itself expressly provides. State of Uttar Pradesh v. Babu Ram Upadhya, AIR 1961 SC 751, records that clauses (1) and (2) of Article 310 took the place of sub-sections (1) and (4) of section 240, and that Article 309 took the place of section 241(2). The history of that transition is set out in the Article 309 article.

Public policy, not prerogative

The government servants in Tulsiram Patel argued that the pleasure doctrine was part of the special prerogative of the Crown, imposed on India by an imperial power, and should be construed strictly against the government. The Constitution Bench, by a majority of four to one in the judgment of Madon J., rejected that premise. It held that the doctrine “is not based upon any special prerogative of the Crown but is based on public policy”, because “the public is vitally interested in the efficiency and integrity of civil services”.

The same reasoning supports the safeguards. The Court held that the protection given to civil servants by legislation in the United Kingdom and by clauses (1) and (2) of Article 311 in India rests on the same public policy, because a servant needs a feeling of security of tenure to discharge duties faithfully. The withdrawal of the Article 311(2) inquiry by the second proviso rests on public policy as well, since the protection must not be abused to keep in service a servant who is dishonest, corrupt or a security risk.

The practical effect is interpretive. Because neither the pleasure nor the safeguards are treated as a relic to be read narrowly, the courts read Articles 309, 310 and 311 together as what Tulsiram Patel calls “an integrated whole”, each given its full natural meaning. The Court had already accepted the public-policy basis in Babu Ram Upadhya in 1960 and in Moti Ram Deka on 5 December 1963, and Tulsiram Patel restated it for the whole disciplinary scheme.

Express exceptions in the Constitution

The words “Except as expressly provided by this Constitution” identify the only sources of restriction. Tulsiram Patel holds that in India, unlike in the United Kingdom, the pleasure is not subject to any law made by Parliament or a State Legislature, and that “the exceptions to the pleasure doctrine can only be those which are expressly provided in the Constitution”.

The express provisions fall into two groups. The first group gives certain constitutional functionaries a fixed tenure, removable only by a special procedure, so that they do not hold office at pleasure at all. Tulsiram Patel names these:

The second group is Article 311, which leaves the pleasure in place but restricts how it may be exercised against a civil servant. The two groups work differently. A Supreme Court judge is not within Article 310 at all; a Section Officer in a ministry is within Article 310 but protected by Article 311.

Article 311 as the principal restriction

Article 311 is the express provision that most central government employees rely on. Parshotam Lal Dhingra v. Union of India, AIR 1958 SC 36, described it as operating as a proviso to Article 310(1), though set out in a separate article, and Tulsiram Patel adopts that description. Its restrictions are two:

1. Article 311(1): no member of a civil service or holder of a civil post may be dismissed or removed by an authority subordinate to the one that appointed them.
2. Article 311(2): none may be dismissed, removed or reduced in rank except after an inquiry in which they are informed of the charges and given a reasonable opportunity of being heard on them.

The first proviso to Article 311(2), inserted by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act, 1976 with effect from 3 January 1977, removed the second hearing on the penalty proposed. The second proviso lifts the Article 311(2) inquiry in three cases: conviction on a criminal charge, an inquiry not reasonably practicable for reasons recorded in writing, and the security of the State. Where one of those clauses is validly invoked, the pleasure operates without an inquiry; Tulsiram Patel holds that the reasons recorded under clause (b) must be relevant to that clause, and where they are irrelevant the order dispensing with the inquiry and the penalty imposed are void. The departmental inquiry procedure, the detail of each clause, and the dispensing with inquiry power under Rule 19 of the CCS (CCA) Rules 1965 are covered in the Article 311 article.

Article 311 protects against three penalties only. Neither Article 310 nor Article 311 sets out the grounds for dismissal or names any other penalty; Tulsiram Patel holds that those matters are left to rules under the proviso to Article 309. A minor penalty such as censure or withholding of increments does not affect tenure, so the pleasure doctrine is not engaged by it, and the procedure for it comes from Rule 16 of the CCS (CCA) Rules, not from the Constitution.

Article 309 rules and the limits of the pleasure

Article 309 and Article 310 open with different words, and the difference decides the relationship between them. Article 309 confers power to regulate recruitment and conditions of service “Subject to the provisions of this Constitution”; Article 310(1) yields only to what is “expressly provided by this Constitution”. Tulsiram Patel draws two conclusions from that contrast.

The first is that Article 309 is subject to Article 310(1). A provision in an Act or rule under Article 309 that restricts the pleasure, not being an express provision of the Constitution, “would be in conflict with Article 310(1) and must be held to be unconstitutional”. Babu Ram Upadhya had put the same point from the other side: “[T]he Constitution has not made ’the tenure at pleasure’ subject to any law made by the appropriate Legislature”, and Moti Ram Deka, at pages 731 to 732, restated the surviving rule that whatever is done under Article 309 must be subject to the pleasure prescribed by Article 310.

The second is that a rule under Article 309 must also conform to Article 311. A rule that permitted dismissal without the inquiry Article 311(2) requires would be void. This is what happened in Moti Ram Deka v. General Manager, N.E.F. Railway, AIR 1964 SC 600, [1964] 5 SCR 683, decided on 5 December 1963, where a seven-judge Bench by six to one struck down Rules 148(3) and 149(3) of the Indian Railway Establishment Code, Volume I, which allowed a permanent railway servant’s service to be terminated on notice. Terminating a permanent servant on notice is removal, so the rules conflicted with Article 311(2); the majority also held them invalid under Article 14. Quoting Moti Ram Deka, B.P. Singhal v. Union of India, (2010) 6 SCC 331, restates the result: “The pleasure of the President would still be there, but it has to be exercised in accordance with the requirements of Art. 311.”

Between those two limits, rules under Article 309 carry most of the scheme. “Conditions of service” includes the right to dismiss, as State of Madhya Pradesh v. Shardul Singh, [1970] 3 SCR 302, held, so the rules can prescribe the procedure by which the pleasure is exercised and the authority that exercises it. The CCS (CCA) Rules 1965, the Fundamental Rules and the CCS (Temporary Service) Rules 1965 are all rules of that kind.

Who exercises the pleasure

In Babu Ram Upadhya, decided on 25 November 1960, the majority speaking through Subba Rao J. stated seven propositions, the second of which was that the power to dismiss a public servant at pleasure is outside Article 154 and “cannot be delegated by the Governor to a subordinate officer”. The result, as later described, was that a disciplinary officer was bound by the statutory rules but the Governor was not.

Moti Ram Deka read proposition 2 down, holding that it did not prevent a law or rule under Article 309 from prescribing the procedure by which, and the authority by whom, the pleasure is exercised. A seven-judge Bench in Shamsher Singh v. State of Punjab, AIR 1974 SC 2192, [1975] 1 SCR 814, decided on 23 August 1974, then stated, on the question of delegation, that the majority view in Babu Ram Upadhya “is no longer good law” after Moti Ram Deka. Shamsher Singh also overruled Sardari Lal v. Union of India, [1971] 3 SCR 461, which had required the President’s personal satisfaction for an order under what is now clause (c) of the second proviso to Article 311(2).

Tulsiram Patel settled the position that applies now:

• The pleasure is not exercised by the President or the Governor personally. It is exercised by the authority specified in rules under the proviso to Article 309, or in Acts referable to that Article or rules under such Acts.
• Where the President or the Governor does exercise it, the act need not be personal, but it must be an act in the constitutional sense, that is, on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers.
• The words of Article 311(1), which forbid dismissal by an authority subordinate to the appointing authority, themselves assume that officers other than the President will dismiss.

For a central civil servant the practical answer is the disciplinary authority named in Rule 12 of the CCS (CCA) Rules 1965 and the Schedule to those Rules, which, for dismissal or removal, must not be subordinate to the appointing authority.

Status, not contract

The doctrine of pleasure is the reason the relationship between the government and its servant is one of status. In Roshan Lal Tandon v. Union of India, AIR 1967 SC 1889, the Supreme Court held that although the origin of government service is contractual, once appointed the servant “acquires a status” and the rights and obligations are determined “by statute or statutory rules which may be framed and altered unilaterally by the Government”. The Court added that Article 311 imposes constitutional restrictions on the power of removal under Article 310.

Two consequences follow for pay. The government revises pay scales, allowances and conditions of service by amending the statutory rules, which is how each Central Pay Commission report is given effect, most recently through the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016. And a challenge to a termination is decided on the service rules and Article 311, before the Central Administrative Tribunal and the writ courts, not on the law of contract.

Arrears of pay and the right to sue

The English doctrine once carried a harsher corollary: that a Crown servant could not sue for arrears of salary, because pay was a bounty of the Crown and not a contractual debt. Lord Blackburn said so in Mulvenna v. The Admiralty, 1926 SC 842, and the Privy Council applied it to India in High Commissioner for India v. I.M. Lall, (1948) 75 IA 225, holding Lall’s dismissal contrary to section 240(3) but refusing his claim for arrears.

The Supreme Court declined to follow Lall on that point. In State of Bihar v. Abdul Majid, AIR 1954 SC 245, [1954] SCR 786, decided on 11 February 1954, the Supreme Court held that the English rule did not prevail in India, because Indian statute law, including section 60 of the Code of Civil Procedure 1908, negatived it, and the Privy Council’s attention in Lall had not been drawn to those provisions. The Privy Council itself later held, in Kodeeswaran v. Attorney-General of Ceylon, [1970] AC 1111, that Lord Blackburn’s reasoning was wrong and that the relevant part of Lall must be regarded as given per incuriam.

The doctrine of pleasure therefore concerns tenure, the right to continue in office. It does not make earned pay a gift. Salary, dearness allowance and arrears due under the rules are enforceable debts, and a servant reinstated after a wrongful dismissal recovers the pay due under FR 54 and FR 54-A.

Article 310(2): compensation for contract appointees

Article 310(2) lets a contract price the early end of a specialist’s appointment. It applies only where four conditions meet:

• the person is not a member of a defence service, an all-India service, or a civil service of the Union or a State;
• the person is appointed under the Constitution to a civil post under the Union or a State;
• the President or the Governor considers the contract necessary to secure the services of a person having special qualifications; and
• the post is abolished before an agreed period ends, or the person is required to vacate it for reasons not connected with any misconduct.

The clause does not take the post out of the pleasure. The appointee can still be removed; what the contract can do is require compensation on that event. Misconduct defeats the claim, so a contract appointee removed for misconduct takes nothing under Article 310(2). The clause descends from section 240(4) of the 1935 Act, which applied the same scheme to persons not members of a civil service of the Crown in India. For how present-day contract engagements of retired officers are structured, see re-employment after retirement.

The armed forces

Members of the defence services hold office at pleasure without the Article 311 safeguards. Article 310(1) names them expressly, while Article 311 speaks only of members of a civil service and holders of a civil post, so the constitutional requirement of an inquiry before dismissal does not reach a soldier, sailor or airman.

The service Acts restate the rule. Section 18 of the Army Act, 1950, headed “Tenure of service under the Act”, provides: “Every person subject to this Act shall hold office during the pleasure of the President.” Dismissal, removal and discharge are then governed by the Act and the Army Rules, 1954, with appeals to the Armed Forces Tribunal. The defence pay matrix and the pension rules for the armed forces are separate from the central civil scheme.

Termination that is not a penalty

Much of the pleasure is exercised without any penalty at all, through service rules that allow a service to end on stated terms. Article 311 is not attracted, because the order is not a dismissal, removal or reduction in rank.

The dividing line is Dhingra’s test of substance over form. An order that ends a service the government was entitled to end, with misconduct as no more than the background motive, is a termination simpliciter. An order founded on misconduct is punitive, whatever neutral words it uses, and is void without the Article 311 inquiry. Shyam Lal v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1954 SC 369, held that compulsory retirement in the public interest is not dismissal or removal, and Union of India v. Col. J.N. Sinha, (1970) 2 SCC 458, upheld premature retirement under FR 56(j) as not a punishment. The mechanics are in the compulsory retirement, discharge from service and confirmation in service articles.

Pleasure and the fundamental rights

The pleasure does not suspend Part III of the Constitution. Because Acts and rules under Article 309 are “Subject to the provisions of this Constitution”, a service rule that violates a fundamental right is void, and Tulsiram Patel gives two instances.

In Kameshwar Prasad v. State of Bihar, [1962] Supp. 3 SCR 369, the Supreme Court struck down Rule 4A of the Bihar Government Servants’ Conduct Rules, 1956, so far as it prohibited any form of demonstration, as violating Article 19(1)(a) and (b). In G.K. Ghose v. E.X. Joseph, [1963] Supp. 1 SCR 789, it struck down Rule 4A of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1955, under Article 19(1)(c), and the part prohibiting participation in any demonstration under Article 19(1)(a) and (b). Rule 7 of the present CCS (Conduct) Rules 1964 bars participation only in a demonstration prejudicial to the grounds it lists, such as the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State and public order.

Article 14 works differently. Tulsiram Patel held that once a clause of the second proviso to Article 311(2) is validly invoked, the hearing it excludes cannot be restored through Article 14, because the Constitution has itself excluded it. Review of a penalty on the ground that it is shockingly disproportionate to the misconduct is a separate line of authority, covered in the penalty proportionality article.

Pleasure outside the civil services

The Constitution uses the same words, “during the pleasure of”, for other offices, and those offices have none of the Article 311 protection. The texts, as printed in the Ministry of Law and Justice edition as on 1 May 2024, are:

A Constitution Bench of five judges examined these offices in B.P. Singhal v. Union of India, (2010) 6 SCC 331, decided on 7 May 2010, a writ petition challenging the removal of four Governors in 2004. Paragraph 21 of the judgment sorts constitutional tenure into three kinds: offices where the pleasure applies without restriction (Ministers, Governors, the Attorney-General and the Advocate-General), offices where it applies subject to restrictions (the civil and defence services under Article 310), and offices where it does not apply at all (the President, Judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, the Comptroller and Auditor-General, and the Election Commissioners). The judgment holds that protection given to one kind cannot be read into another.

Even the unrestricted pleasure has limits. The Court held at paragraph 13 that “The doctrine of pleasure does not mean a licence to act arbitrarily, capriciously or whimsically”, and at paragraph 22 that the withdrawal of pleasure “can only be for valid reasons”. On a Governor, paragraph 50 concludes that the President can remove one at any time without assigning reasons or giving notice, but that “the power under Article 156(1) cannot be exercised in an arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable manner”; being out of sync with the policies of the Union Government, or a change of government at the Centre, is not a ground. Once a prima facie case of arbitrariness or mala fides is made out, the Union must disclose the material behind the decision, and the court interferes where the reasons are irrelevant, arbitrary or mala fide; it will not interfere “merely on the ground that a different view is possible or that the material or reasons are insufficient”.

For a civil servant the Singhal classification confirms the position already reached in Tulsiram Patel: the pleasure over a member of a civil service is the restricted kind, and the restrictions are the ones Article 311 states. The chairman and members of a Public Service Commission, including the Union Public Service Commission, sit outside the pleasure altogether: Article 317(1) allows removal on the ground of misbehaviour only after an inquiry by the Supreme Court on a reference from the President, and Article 317(3) allows removal for insolvency, paid employment outside the duties of the office, or infirmity of mind or body.

Pay and pension consequences

The pension that follows the end of a service depends on which exercise of the pleasure ended it. For a government servant under the CCS (Pension) Rules 2021, notified as G.S.R. 868(E) on 20 December 2021:

Rule 24 of the 2021 Rules adds that dismissal or removal forfeits the past service itself. A dismissal therefore forfeits a pension that Rule 44 would otherwise compute at 50% of emoluments, the figure the Rule 44 pension calculator works out for a given basic pay.

Related Articles

• Article 311 of the Constitution
• Article 309 of the Constitution
• Article 312 of the Constitution
• Article 313 of the Constitution
• Government of India Act 1935
• CCS (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1965
• CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964
• CCS (Temporary Service) Rules, 1965
• CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021
• Fundamental Rules
• Conditions of service
• Dismissal and removal from service
• Reduction in rank
• Compulsory retirement
• Premature retirement
• Voluntary retirement
• Resignation from government service
• Discharge from service
• Probation in central government service
• Confirmation in service
• Temporary post
• Disciplinary authority
• Departmental inquiry
• Dispensing with inquiry
• Major and minor penalty proceedings
• Minor penalty
• Misconduct
• Suspension
• Penalty proportionality
• Principles of natural justice
• Compassionate allowance
• Central Administrative Tribunal
• Armed Forces Tribunal
• Central Armed Police Forces
• Defence pay matrix
• All India Services
• Central government employees in India
• Union Public Service Commission
• Comptroller and Auditor General of India
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Central Pay Commission
• Re-employment after retirement

External references

• Ministry of Law and Justice, The Constitution of India as on 1 May 2024: https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s380537a945c7aaa788ccfcdf1b99b5d8f/uploads/2024/07/20240716890312078.pdf
• Supreme Court of India, judgments: https://www.sci.gov.in/
• Department of Personnel and Training, establishment rules and Office Memoranda: https://dopt.gov.in/
• Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare: https://doppw.gov.in/
• Legislative Department, Ministry of Law and Justice: https://legislative.gov.in/
• The Gazette of India: https://egazette.gov.in/

References

1. Constitution of India, Article 310 (tenure of office of persons serving the Union or a State), clauses (1) and (2), and Article 311 (dismissal, removal or reduction in rank of persons employed in civil capacities), in Chapter I of Part XIV, as printed in the Ministry of Law and Justice edition as on 1 May 2024; the words relating to the Rajpramukh omitted by the Constitution (Seventh Amendment) Act, 1956, with effect from 1 November 1956.
2. Government of India Act 1919, section 96B, and Government of India Act 1935, section 240, sub-sections (1) to (4), as reproduced and compared in Union of India v. Tulsiram Patel, (1985) 3 SCC 398.
3. Union of India v. Tulsiram Patel, (1985) 3 SCC 398, [1985] Supp. 2 SCR 131, Constitution Bench (the pleasure doctrine in the United Kingdom and in India, its public-policy basis, the express exceptions, Article 309 subject to Article 310(1), and the exercise of the pleasure).
4. State of Uttar Pradesh v. Babu Ram Upadhya, AIR 1961 SC 751, (1961) 2 SCR 679, decided 25 November 1960; Moti Ram Deka v. General Manager, N.E.F. Railway, [1964] 5 SCR 683; Shamsher Singh v. State of Punjab, [1975] 1 SCR 814.
5. Parshotam Lal Dhingra v. Union of India, AIR 1958 SC 36, [1958] SCR 828; Shyam Lal v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 1954 SC 369; Union of India v. Col. J.N. Sinha, (1970) 2 SCC 458.
6. Roshan Lal Tandon v. Union of India, AIR 1967 SC 1889, (1968) 1 SCR 185; State of Bihar v. Abdul Majid, [1954] SCR 786.
7. Kameshwar Prasad v. State of Bihar, [1962] Supp. 3 SCR 369; G.K. Ghose v. E.X. Joseph, [1963] Supp. 1 SCR 789.
8. Army Act, 1950, section 18 (tenure of service under the Act).
9. Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 2021, G.S.R. 868(E) dated 20 December 2021, Rules 24, 40, 41 and 42; Central Civil Services (Temporary Service) Rules, 1965, Rule 5(1); Fundamental Rules 54, 54-A and 56(j).