Extraordinary Leave

Extraordinary leave is leave without pay under Rule 32 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, granted when no other leave is due. Limits, increment and pension effect.

Updated 19 July 2026 · Reviewed by Salary-Calculator.in

Extraordinary leave is leave without any leave salary, granted under Rule 32 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 to a central government servant in special circumstances: either when no other leave is admissible, or when other leave is due but the servant applies in writing for extraordinary leave instead. It is the only recognised kind of leave that carries no pay at all, and it is the leave of last resort in the CCS scheme, the head under which a long absence is kept authorised once the paid leave accounts are exhausted.

The point of extraordinary leave is continuity of service rather than income. An employee on extraordinary leave draws nothing for the period, but they remain in service, the post is held for them, and the break that unauthorised absence would otherwise create is avoided. That is why it matters: a serious illness that outlasts the earned leave and the half pay leave, a spouse posted abroad, a long course of study, or an inability to rejoin duty for reasons outside the employee’s control are all situations where extraordinary leave keeps the person on the rolls when no paid leave is left.

Extraordinary leave sits at the bottom of a ladder of pay against availability. Earned leave is full pay but capped and meant for planned absence. Half pay leave is half pay but uncapped, the reserve for the long illness. Commuted leave draws half pay leave at full pay on a medical certificate. When those are gone, extraordinary leave is what remains: no pay, but the absence stays lawful. An employee moves down this ladder as the absence lengthens, from earned leave to half pay leave and finally, if needed, to extraordinary leave.

This article covers the grant conditions under Rule 32, the period ceilings that bind a temporary employee and the wider latitude a permanent employee has, the five-year outer limit under Rule 12, and the two questions that most affect an employee’s future: whether the period counts for increment under Fundamental Rule 26 and whether it counts as qualifying service for pension under the CCS (Pension) Rules 2021. It also sets out how extraordinary leave can be converted into another kind of leave after the event, and how an unauthorised absence can be regularised as extraordinary leave.

When extraordinary leave is granted

Rule 32(1) sets two situations in which extraordinary leave may be granted to a government servant, other than a military officer. The first is where no other leave is admissible: the earned leave, half pay leave and any leave not due are either exhausted or not available, so extraordinary leave is the only head left. The second is where other leave is in fact admissible, but the government servant applies in writing for extraordinary leave. An employee might do this, for example, to preserve a half pay leave balance for a later need, or because the reason for the absence is one for which they would rather not draw on a paid account.

In both cases the defining feature is the same: no leave salary is payable for the period of extraordinary leave. This is what separates it from every other kind of leave. It is not a paid entitlement drawn from an account; it is a discretionary grant of unpaid absence. The grant is at the discretion of the leave-sanctioning authority, and extraordinary leave is not claimable as a matter of right, though in practice it is granted where the circumstances are genuine and no other leave is due.

Because it carries no pay, extraordinary leave is not debited to any leave account. Earned leave, half pay leave and commuted leave are each carved out of their respective balances when taken. Extraordinary leave is not, because there is no balance to carve it from: it is granted precisely when the balances are empty. The employee’s leave accounts are unaffected by the grant itself, though extraordinary leave does have a downstream effect on the next accrual of earned leave and half pay leave, discussed below.

The period ceilings under Rule 32(2)

Rule 32(2) fixes the maximum period of extraordinary leave that may be granted on any one occasion, but only for a government servant who is not in permanent or quasi-permanent employment, that is, a temporary employee or a probationer. The ceilings are graded by the cause of the leave and by the length of service already rendered.

Cause of the leave	Maximum period per occasion	Service condition
Ordinary case (any reason)	3 months	None
Illness supported by a medical certificate	6 months	1 year of continuous service completed
Treatment for tuberculosis, leprosy, cancer or mental illness	18 months	1 year of continuous service completed, treatment from an approved institution or specialist
Studies certified to be in the public interest	24 months	3 years of continuous service completed

Each ceiling includes the three months admissible under the ordinary case, so the higher limits are not additional to the base three months but inclusive of them. The eighteen-month limit for the specified diseases and the twenty-four-month limit for public-interest study are the two extended cases; both require the employee to have crossed a service threshold, one year for the diseases and three years for the study.

Two related provisions in Rule 32 apply to these ceilings. Where extraordinary leave is granted for study under the public-interest clause, and the leave exceeds what the rule would otherwise allow, the employee is required to execute a bond in the prescribed form undertaking to refund the government’s expenditure with interest if they fail to return to duty or resign within a set period of returning; two permanent government servants stand as sureties. Separately, for a government servant belonging to a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe, the Head of Department may grant extraordinary leave, in relaxation of the Rule 32(2) ceilings, to attend a pre-examination training course at a notified centre, so that the period limits do not stand in the way of that training.

Rule 32(5) closes an obvious gap. Two spells of extraordinary leave separated only by another kind of leave are treated as one continuous spell for the purpose of the Rule 32(2) ceilings. Without this, an employee could reset the clock by interposing a short spell of some other leave; the rule prevents that, so the ceiling applies to the aggregate extraordinary leave in the combined absence.

Permanent employees and the five-year cap

For a permanent government servant, Rule 32 fixes no ceiling at all. The graded limits of Rule 32(2) apply only to those not in permanent or quasi-permanent service, so a permanent employee may be granted extraordinary leave for as long as the circumstances justify, at the discretion of the sanctioning authority. This is the practical significance of the temporary-versus-permanent distinction: the same unpaid leave is tightly bounded for a temporary hand and open-ended for a permanent one.

The one limit that binds everyone is Rule 12 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, inserted with effect from 2012. Rule 12(1) provides that no government servant shall be granted leave of any kind for a continuous period exceeding five years. Rule 12(2) goes further: a government servant who remains absent for a continuous period exceeding five years, with or without leave and other than on foreign service , is deemed to have resigned from the service, after being given a reasonable opportunity to explain. A later proviso exempts a case where the leave was applied for on a medical certificate in connection with a disability.

Because extraordinary leave is the head under which the longest authorised absences are held, it is the kind most likely to run up against this five-year point. The five-year cap is therefore the effective outer limit on extraordinary leave for a permanent employee: within it, the absence can be sustained as extraordinary leave; beyond it, the continued absence is treated as a deemed resignation rather than as more leave.

Effect on increment

Whether a period of extraordinary leave counts towards the next increment is governed by Fundamental Rule 26. The general rule under FR 26 is that all leave counts for increment except extraordinary leave taken otherwise than on medical certificate. The exception is worded around extraordinary leave, which tells you where the line falls.

Extraordinary leave taken on a medical certificate counts for increment automatically; no separate direction is needed. For extraordinary leave taken for any other reason, the period does not count unless the competent authority directs that it should, and the authority may so direct only in defined cases: where the extraordinary leave was taken for a cause beyond the government servant’s control, such as an inability to join or rejoin duty owing to civil commotion, or where it was taken for prosecuting higher scientific or technical studies. Extraordinary leave for private affairs does not count for increment in any case.

Where the extraordinary leave does not count, the date of the next increment is postponed by the length of the non-qualifying period. The increment is not forfeited; it is deferred, so the employee reaches the next stage of the pay level later than they otherwise would. This links the leave to pay fixation and the date of next increment : a non-qualifying spell of extraordinary leave shifts the increment date forward by exactly that spell.

Effect on qualifying service for pension

The pension consequence of extraordinary leave is set by Rule 21 of the CCS (Pension) Rules 2021, which governs the counting of periods spent on leave as qualifying service. The rule draws the same medical-certificate line that FR 26 draws for increment, but the default for non-medical extraordinary leave is stricter.

All leave during service for which leave salary is payable counts as qualifying service, and so does all extraordinary leave granted on a medical certificate. For extraordinary leave other than on a medical certificate, the appointing authority may, at the time of granting the leave, allow the period to count as qualifying service. The categories for which this is normally allowed are the same two that recur through the extraordinary-leave rules: an inability to join or rejoin duty on account of civil commotion or a cause beyond the employee’s control, and the prosecution of higher technical or scientific studies. Any other extraordinary leave is non-qualifying.

The service-book entry is what makes this real. Where a spell of extraordinary leave is not to count as qualifying service, a definite entry to that effect must be made in the employee’s service book. The Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare, in its Office Memorandum No. 28/04/2024-P&PW(i)/QS/10145 dated 29 October 2025, reiterating an earlier instruction, requires that entry and provides that it may be made later but not later than six months before the employee’s superannuation. If no such entry is made, the extraordinary leave is treated as counting for qualifying service. The presumption, in other words, runs in the employee’s favour: silence in the service book means the period counts. This feeds directly into the qualifying service that fixes the pension calculation .

Effect on leave accrual

Extraordinary leave is not debited to any account, but it does reduce the advance credit of the paid leaves for the next half-year. Earned leave is credited in advance at 15 days on 1 January and 1 July. Under Rule 27, where a government servant had a period of extraordinary leave, or a period treated as dies non , in the previous half-year, the earned-leave credit at the start of the next half-year is reduced by one-tenth of that period, subject to a maximum reduction of 15 days. So 30 days of extraordinary leave in one half-year trims 3 days from the earned-leave credited for the next.

Half pay leave carries an analogous reduction. Where the employee had a period of dies non or extraordinary leave in the previous half-year, the half-yearly half pay leave credit is reduced by one-eighteenth of that period, subject to a maximum reduction of 10 days. The two reductions run on the same logic: a spell of unpaid leave or unauthorised absence in one half-year trims the paid leave credited for the next, so the credit tracks the service actually rendered rather than the calendar.

Conversion into another kind of leave

A spell of extraordinary leave is not necessarily final. Rule 10 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 allows one kind of leave to be commuted retrospectively into another. At the government servant’s written request, the leave-sanctioning authority may convert a period first sanctioned as extraordinary leave into another kind of leave that was in fact due and admissible at the time, such as half pay leave, commuted leave or earned leave, with the leave salary adjusted accordingly. The conversion is not claimable as a right, and the request must be made within a short window of the employee rejoining duty on the expiry of the spell.

This is the ordinary route by which a hospitalisation is regularised. A long illness may be covered by extraordinary leave at the time, because the paperwork is not yet settled or the balances are uncertain; once the medical certificate is in and the leave balance is known, the employee can ask for the extraordinary leave to be commuted into the paid leave that was due, converting an unpaid absence into a paid one and recovering the leave salary for the period. The conversion works in the employee’s favour, turning a no-pay spell into a full-pay or half-pay one where the balances allowed it.

Rule 32(6) provides the reverse direction. The competent authority may commute retrospectively a period of absence without leave into extraordinary leave. This regularises an unauthorised absence: rather than treating it as a break in service or as dies non, the authority converts it into extraordinary leave, which keeps the service continuous. It does not give the employee any pay for the period, because extraordinary leave is unpaid, but it removes the break that an unregularised absence would create.

Combination with other leave

Extraordinary leave can be combined with other leave. Rule 11 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 allows any kind of leave to be granted in combination with, or in continuation of, any other kind, except where a specific rule provides otherwise. So extraordinary leave can be prefixed or suffixed to earned leave, half pay leave or commuted leave, which is how a single long absence is often built: paid leave first, then extraordinary leave once the paid leave is exhausted, all treated as one continuous spell of absence. The Rule 32(5) rule that two extraordinary-leave spells split by other leave count as one spell for the ceilings works alongside this, so combining leaves does not let a temporary employee escape the Rule 32(2) limits.

Extraordinary leave in context

Extraordinary leave is best understood against the other heads of the CCS (Leave) Rules . It is the unpaid floor of the system, reached only when the paid leaves are gone. For a temporary employee it is tightly rationed by cause and service length; for a permanent employee it is limited only by the five-year cap. Its two lasting effects, on increment and on qualifying service, both turn on whether the leave was on a medical certificate, with a narrow set of further cases, cause beyond control and higher study, in which the authority may let it count. And it is reversible in both directions: convertible into paid leave after the event under Rule 10, and available to regularise an unauthorised absence under Rule 32(6).

For the employee, the practical guidance is to treat extraordinary leave as the last option, to get the reason on record, and to secure the service-book position early. A medical certificate, where the absence is on medical grounds, is what makes the period count for both increment and pension without any further discretion. Where the leave is for study or a cause beyond control, the counting depends on a direction or an entry that must be made at the right time, so the position should be settled at the point of grant rather than left to be argued at retirement.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is extraordinary leave?

Extraordinary leave is leave without any leave salary, granted under Rule 32 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 when no other leave is admissible to the government servant, or when other leave is due but the servant applies in writing for extraordinary leave instead. It carries no pay for the period. It is the leave of last resort that keeps a long absence authorised: the employee stays on the rolls and the post is held, but nothing is paid for the days spent on it.

Does extraordinary leave carry any pay?

No. Extraordinary leave carries no leave salary at all. It is the only recognised kind of leave under the CCS (Leave) Rules that is completely without pay: earned leave and commuted leave are at full pay, half pay leave and leave not due are at half pay, and extraordinary leave is at no pay. The period is unpaid, though the employee remains in service and the post is kept for them.

How long can extraordinary leave be granted for?

For a temporary employee the ceiling depends on the cause: three months in the ordinary case, six months where the employee has completed one year of continuous service and the request is supported by a medical certificate, eighteen months where the employee has one year of service and is under treatment for tuberculosis, leprosy, cancer or mental illness, and twenty-four months where the leave is for studies certified to be in the public interest and the employee has three years of continuous service. A permanent employee has no fixed extraordinary-leave ceiling under Rule 32; the only limit is the five-year cap on continuous leave of any kind under Rule 12.

Is extraordinary leave debited to the leave account?

No. Extraordinary leave is not carved out of any leave account. Earned leave, half pay leave and commuted leave are debited to their accounts when taken; extraordinary leave is not, because it is not an accrued credit but a discretionary grant of unpaid leave when the accounts are empty. It does, though, reduce the advance credit of earned leave and half pay leave for the next half-year, which is a separate accrual effect, not a debit of extraordinary leave itself.

Does extraordinary leave count for increment?

Only in defined cases. Under Fundamental Rule 26, all leave counts for increment except extraordinary leave taken otherwise than on medical certificate. So extraordinary leave on a medical certificate counts automatically. For other extraordinary leave the competent authority may direct that it count, and only where the leave was taken for a cause beyond the employee’s control, such as inability to rejoin duty due to civil commotion, or for prosecuting higher scientific or technical studies. Extraordinary leave for private affairs does not count, and the date of the next increment is postponed by the non-qualifying period.

Does extraordinary leave count as qualifying service for pension?

Extraordinary leave granted on a medical certificate counts as qualifying service automatically, under Rule 21 of the CCS (Pension) Rules 2021. Extraordinary leave without a medical certificate counts only if the appointing authority allows it to count at the time of granting the leave, which is normally done where the leave was for a cause beyond the employee’s control or for higher technical or scientific study. Where extraordinary leave is not to count, a definite entry must be made in the service book to that effect; if no such entry is made, the period is treated as qualifying service.

Can extraordinary leave be converted into another kind of leave later?

Yes. Under Rule 10 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, at the employee’s written request the leave-sanctioning authority may retrospectively commute a spell of extraordinary leave into another kind of leave that was due and admissible at the time, such as half pay leave, commuted leave or earned leave, with the leave salary adjusted. This is how a hospitalisation first covered by extraordinary leave is regularised once the medical certificate and the leave balance are settled. It is not claimable as a right, and the request must be made within a short window of the employee rejoining duty.

What happens if extraordinary leave runs past five years?

Rule 12 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 bars any government servant from being granted leave of any kind for a continuous period exceeding five years. An employee who remains absent for a continuous period exceeding five years, with or without leave and other than on foreign service, is deemed to have resigned from service after being given a reasonable opportunity to explain. Extraordinary leave, being the leave that keeps the longest absences authorised, is the kind most likely to reach this outer limit, so the five-year point is the effective ceiling for a permanent employee.

Can extraordinary leave be granted to regularise absence without leave?

Yes. Under Rule 32(6) the competent authority may commute retrospectively a period of absence without leave into extraordinary leave. This is the mechanism by which an unauthorised absence, once the reasons are examined, is regularised as extraordinary leave rather than treated as a break in service or dies non. It does not entitle the employee to pay for the period, because extraordinary leave is unpaid, but it keeps the service continuous.

Do temporary and permanent employees get extraordinary leave on the same terms?

The nature of the leave is the same, unpaid leave when no other leave is due, but the ceilings differ. The period limits in Rule 32(2), three, six, eighteen and twenty-four months by cause, apply to an employee who is not in permanent or quasi-permanent service, that is to a temporary employee or a probationer. A permanent employee is not bound by those figures and may be granted extraordinary leave for as long as the circumstances justify, subject only to the five-year continuous-leave cap under Rule 12.

External references

References

CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 32 (extraordinary leave), Rule 10 (commutation of one kind of leave into another), Rule 11 (combination of leave), Rule 12 (maximum period of continuous absence), and Rule 27 (earned leave credit).
Fundamental Rule 26 (conditions on which service counts for increments), proviso on extraordinary leave.
CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021, Rule 21 (counting of periods spent on leave as qualifying service).
Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare OM No. 28/04/2024-P&PW(i)/QS/10145 dated 29 October 2025, on the service-book entry for extraordinary leave not to count as qualifying service.