Leave Not Due for Central Government Employees

Leave not due is half pay leave granted in advance under Rule 31, up to 360 days in a career, recovered if the employee does not return. Conditions and limits.

Updated 20 July 2026 · Reviewed by Salary-Calculator.in

Leave not due is half pay leave granted in advance to a central government employee who has no half pay leave at credit, under Rule 31 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, up to a maximum of 360 days in a career on medical certificate, debited against the half pay leave earned afterwards, and recovered if the employee does not return to duty.

Leave not due is the leave rules’ overdraft. An employee who has exhausted the earned leave and the half pay leave, and still needs paid leave, can be advanced half pay leave before it has been earned, on the understanding that continued service will earn it back. It is the same half pay leave as half pay leave proper, at the same half-pay rate, but taken from a balance the employee does not yet have rather than one already built up. That is the whole idea of the provision: it lets a long absence, usually a long illness, stay on paid leave when the earned balance has run out, against the promise of future accrual.

Because it is an advance, leave not due comes hedged with conditions the ordinary leaves do not carry. It is granted only where there is a reasonable prospect that the employee will return and earn it back, it is capped so it cannot outrun the leave the employee is likely to accrue, and the leave salary is recovered if the employee leaves the service without returning to duty. This article sets out what leave not due is, who can take it and on what conditions, the 360-day limit and the leave salary, the recovery rule and its carve-outs, the bar on taking it before retirement, and how it differs from the commuted leave that is the other leave drawn from the half-pay account. The wider leave code is in the CCS (Leave) Rules article, and the account this leave advances is in the half pay leave article.

What leave not due is

Leave not due is defined by Rule 31 as half pay leave granted to a government servant in advance, where no half pay leave is at credit, to be debited against the half pay leave the servant earns subsequently. The mechanism is the key to it. An employee accrues half pay leave at 20 days a year, 10 on 1 January and 10 on 1 July, and normally can take only what is at credit. Leave not due breaks that link for a genuine need: it lets the employee draw half pay leave before the credit exists, and then repays it out of the credit that accrues later, so the half pay leave account runs a temporary negative balance that future service clears.

That makes it an advance, not a fresh grant. It carries the half-pay rate because it is half pay leave, and it is limited by future accrual because it is repaid from future accrual. Everything else in Rule 31, the reasonable-prospect condition, the 360-day cap, the recovery on not returning, follows from this single fact: leave not due is leave the employee has not yet earned, given on the expectation that they will.

Who can take leave not due

Rule 31 draws a sharp line between permanent and temporary employees. A permanent government servant may be granted leave not due for any purpose, subject to the leave-sanctioning authority being satisfied that there is a reasonable prospect of the employee returning to duty on the expiry of the leave. The reasonable-prospect condition is central: leave not due is repaid by future service, so it is granted only where the employee is expected to come back and render that service. An employee who is not expected to return, because the illness is terminal or the intention is to leave, does not meet the condition, since there would be no future accrual to repay the advance.

A temporary government servant is treated more narrowly. Leave not due is granted to a temporary employee only where the employee is suffering from one of four named illnesses, tuberculosis, leprosy, cancer, or mental illness, has put in a minimum of one year of service, and holds a post that is likely to last until the return to duty, with the request supported by a medical certificate. The restriction reflects the weaker security of temporary service: the government advances leave against future accrual only for the gravest illnesses and only where the temporary employee has some service behind them and a post to return to. Military officers are outside these provisions, being governed by their own leave rules.

The 360-day limit and the leave earned thereafter

Leave not due is capped two ways, both in Rule 31. The first is the career ceiling: leave not due is limited to a maximum of 360 days during the entire service, on medical certificate. This is a whole-career limit, not an annual one, so the 360 days is the total an employee can ever draw as leave not due across a working life, and once used the provision is spent.

The second cap is the future-accrual limit: at any grant, leave not due is limited to the half pay leave the employee is likely to earn thereafter. This ties each grant to the employee’s remaining service. An employee in mid-career, with years of accrual ahead, can be advanced more; an employee near the end of service, who will earn little further half pay leave, can be advanced correspondingly less, because the advance must be repayable from the leave still to come. The two caps work together: the 360-day ceiling is the outer limit for a career, and the future-accrual limit keeps each individual grant within what the particular employee can realistically earn back.

The leave salary

Leave not due is paid at the half-pay-leave rate. During it the employee draws leave salary equal to half of basic pay, with dearness allowance on that half, computed under Rule 40 exactly as for ordinary half pay leave. It is not full pay: leave not due advances half pay leave, so it carries the half-pay rate of the leave it advances, and an employee on leave not due draws the same reduced salary they would draw on half pay leave proper.

This is the practical difference between leave not due and the commuted leave discussed below. An employee who needs full pay for a spell of illness, and has half pay leave at credit, can commute it to full pay under Rule 30 at the cost of two days of balance for each day. An employee with no balance at all cannot commute anything, and leave not due is the fallback: half pay in the hand now, repaid by service later, rather than full pay drawn against a balance that does not exist.

The recovery rule and its carve-outs

The counterpart of an advance is recovery, and Rule 31 provides for it. If a government servant who has been granted leave not due resigns, or is permitted to retire voluntarily, without returning to duty, the leave not due is cancelled, the resignation or the retirement is treated as taking effect from the date on which the leave not due commenced, and the leave salary paid for the leave not due is recovered. The logic is that the advance was given against future service that the employee has chosen not to render, so the leave is undone and the pay for it is taken back.

The recovery is not absolute. Rule 31 carves out the cases where the employee does not return through no choice of their own. No recovery is made where the employee retires by reason of ill-health that incapacitates them for further service, the invalid pension case, because the employee is medically unable to return rather than unwilling. No recovery is made in the event of the employee’s death. And no recovery is made on a compulsory or premature retirement ordered by the government, since that too is an involuntary exit. The effect is that the recovery bites on a voluntary departure, a resignation or a voluntary retirement, and not on an involuntary one, so an employee who genuinely cannot return, or whom the government retires, is not made to repay the leave salary.

Not for leave preparatory to retirement

Leave not due cannot be taken as leave preparatory to retirement. Rule 31 opens by excepting the case of leave preparatory to retirement , the leave an employee takes in the run-up to superannuation, and the exception follows from the nature of the provision. Leave not due is an advance repaid by future service; an employee on the point of retiring has no future service left in which to earn it back, so the advance could never be repaid and the leave salary would simply be a gift. The rule therefore shuts the door on using leave not due to lengthen the paid leave at the end of a career.

The point is worth stating because it marks the boundary of the provision. Leave not due is a mid-service tool for an employee who has a genuine need and a future in the service to repay the advance. It is not a retirement benefit and not a way to draw extra pay on the way out. An employee near retirement who needs leave, and has no balance, is on extraordinary leave without pay, not on leave not due, once the reasonable-prospect and future-accrual conditions can no longer be met.

Leave not due and commuted leave

Leave not due and commuted leave are the two leaves drawn from the half pay leave side of the rules, and they pull in opposite directions. Commuted leave, under Rule 30, takes half pay leave the employee already has and converts it to full pay, debiting two days of the balance for each day of full-pay leave taken, on a medical certificate. Leave not due, under Rule 31, takes half pay leave the employee does not yet have and gives it at the half-pay rate, to be repaid by future accrual. Commuted leave spends an existing balance faster to raise the pay; leave not due spends a balance that does not yet exist to bridge a gap.

The two do not combine, and one cannot be built on the other. An employee with no half pay leave at credit cannot take commuted leave, because there is nothing to commute; there is no full-pay commutation of leave that has not been earned. Such an employee falls back on leave not due at half pay. Both leaves, though, carry the same recovery rule: commuted leave under Rule 30 and leave not due under Rule 31 are each recovered if the employee does not return to duty, with the same carve-outs for invalidation and death, because both give the employee leave salary on the strength of service that is expected but not yet rendered.

The table sets the three half-pay-account leaves side by side.

Leave	Rule	Drawn from	Pay	Recovery on not returning
Half pay leave	29	The credited balance (20 days a year)	Half pay	None
Commuted leave	30	The credited balance, 2 days for 1	Full pay	Recovered, save on invalidation or death
Leave not due	31	Future accrual (advance, up to 360 days)	Half pay	Recovered, save on invalidation, death or compulsory retirement

How leave not due is repaid

Leave not due is repaid automatically out of future accrual. When the employee returns to duty and resumes earning half pay leave at 20 days a year, that accrual first goes to clear the leave not due already drawn: the half pay leave account carries the negative balance the advance created, and the accrual brings it back towards zero before the employee has any half pay leave positively at credit again. So an employee who took, say, 180 days of leave not due earns half pay leave for the next several years without a positive balance, because each credit is absorbed in clearing the advance.

This repayment mechanism is why the future-accrual limit matters at the point of grant. The sanctioning authority does not advance more leave not due than the employee can realistically earn back, precisely because the earning back is how the advance is cleared. An employee whose remaining service will accrue only a modest amount of half pay leave is held to a modest grant, so the account can be brought back to zero within the service that is left. The provision is self-liquidating by design: it is drawn against future accrual and cleared by future accrual.

An illustration

Take an employee with no half pay leave at credit who needs 120 days of leave for a long illness and is expected to recover and return. With no balance, the employee cannot take half pay leave in the ordinary way and cannot commute anything to full pay. Leave not due bridges the gap: 120 days are advanced at the half-pay rate, and the half pay leave account is shown at minus 120 days. When the employee returns to duty, the half pay leave earned at 20 days a year first clears the advance, so it takes six years of accrual (120 divided by 20) before the account is back to zero and the employee again has half pay leave positively at credit. Throughout, the employee has drawn 120 days at half pay that they had not earned when they took it, and repaid it by staying in service. Had the same employee instead resigned a year after returning, with the advance not yet cleared, the leave salary for the unearned portion would be recovered, unless the exit was on invalidation or death. The numbers show why the provision is both an advance and a commitment: it delivers paid leave when the balance is nil, but only against the service that repays it.

Where leave not due sits in the long-illness ladder

Leave not due has its place in the sequence an employee moves through on a long illness. The paid leaves come first: earned leave at full pay, then half pay leave at half pay, with commuted leave available to raise a spell of half pay leave to full pay on a medical certificate. When the half pay leave balance itself is exhausted, and the conditions are met, leave not due advances further half pay leave against future accrual. When even that is spent, or the conditions for it cannot be met, the employee passes to extraordinary leave , which carries no leave salary at all but keeps the absence authorised.

Beyond the leave rules lies the pension side. An employee who cannot resume duty when all the leave is exhausted may be retired on an invalid pension , the medical retirement that is also the carve-out from the leave-not-due recovery. Leave not due therefore sits near the far end of the ladder, one of the last paid options before an absence tips into unpaid extraordinary leave or into medical retirement, which is why it is reserved for the case where the employee is genuinely expected to return.

Applying for leave not due

Leave not due is applied for like any leave, but the application must speak to the conditions the rule imposes. An employee applies to the leave-sanctioning authority, ordinarily with a medical certificate since the 360-day career limit is expressed on medical certificate, stating the need and, in substance, the prospect of returning to duty. For a permanent employee the authority must be satisfied of the reasonable prospect of return; for a temporary employee the application must show one of the four named illnesses, the minimum year of service, and a post likely to last until the return, on a medical certificate.

The authority then sanctions leave not due within the two caps, the 360-day career ceiling and the amount the employee is likely to earn thereafter, and the leave is drawn at half pay and recorded as a debit against future half pay leave. An employee should apply understanding that the leave is an advance: it is granted on the footing of a return to duty, it is repaid out of the half pay leave earned afterwards, and the leave salary is recovered if the employee resigns or retires voluntarily without coming back. Treating it as an advance to be earned back, rather than as free leave, is the right frame for the application.

Common errors

A few misreadings recur, and each turns on a specific condition of the provision.

Thinking leave not due is paid at full pay. It is half pay leave in advance, so it carries the half-pay rate, not full pay.
Reading the 360 days as an annual allowance. It is a whole-career maximum on medical certificate, not a figure that renews each year.
Assuming any employee can take it. A permanent employee needs a reasonable prospect of return; a temporary employee can take it only for tuberculosis, leprosy, cancer or mental illness, with a year’s service and a continuing post.
Believing it can be taken before retirement. Rule 31 excepts leave preparatory to retirement, because an advance that must be earned back cannot be given to someone with no service left to earn it.
Expecting to commute leave not due to full pay. Commuted leave needs a half pay leave balance to convert; there is no full-pay commutation of leave that has not been earned, so an employee with no balance takes leave not due at half pay.
Overlooking the recovery. The leave salary is recovered on a voluntary resignation or retirement without returning to duty, though not on invalidation, death, or a compulsory or premature retirement.

Applicability

Rule 31 applies to central government civilian employees governed by the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, with the permanent-and-temporary distinction set out above and military officers outside it. Members of the All India Services are governed by the All India Services (Leave) Rules 1955, and railway servants and the staff of some autonomous bodies by rules that adopt or track the central provision, each carrying its own version of leave not due on broadly similar lines. An employee should confirm the entitlement under the leave rules that govern their own service, though for the great majority of central government civilian employees it is the leave not due of Rule 31 set out here.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is leave not due?

Leave not due is half pay leave granted in advance, under Rule 31 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972, to an employee who has no half pay leave at credit but needs it. It is an advance against the half pay leave the employee will earn later: the leave is debited against the half pay leave earned afterwards, so the employee draws now what they will accrue in future. It is paid at the half-pay-leave rate, and it is granted only where there is a reasonable prospect of the employee returning to duty to earn it back.

How many days of leave not due can be taken?

Up to 360 days in the entire service, on medical certificate, under Rule 31. Within that ceiling the amount granted at any time is also limited to the half pay leave the employee is likely to earn thereafter, so a person near the end of service, who will accrue little further half pay leave, can be granted correspondingly less. The 360 days is a whole-career limit, not an annual one.

Is leave not due paid?

Yes, at the half-pay-leave rate. During leave not due the employee draws leave salary equal to half of basic pay, with dearness allowance on that half, the same rate as ordinary half pay leave under Rule 40. It is not full pay: leave not due is half pay leave taken before it is earned, so it carries the half-pay rate of the leave it advances, not the full pay of earned leave.

Who can be granted leave not due?

A permanent government servant can be granted leave not due for any purpose where the sanctioning authority is satisfied there is a reasonable prospect of the employee returning to duty on its expiry. A temporary government servant can be granted it only if suffering from tuberculosis, leprosy, cancer or mental illness, has put in at least one year of service, and holds a post likely to last until the return to duty, on a medical certificate. It is not granted to military officers under these rules.

What happens if I do not return to duty after leave not due?

The leave not due is cancelled and the leave salary is recovered. Under Rule 31, if an employee who has taken leave not due resigns or is permitted to retire voluntarily without returning to duty, the leave not due is cancelled, the resignation or retirement takes effect from the date the leave not due began, and the leave salary paid for it is recovered. There are carve-outs: no recovery is made where the employee retires by reason of ill-health that incapacitates them for further service, where the employee dies, or on a compulsory or premature retirement, so the recovery bites on a voluntary exit, not an involuntary one.

Can leave not due be taken before retirement?

No. Leave not due cannot be granted as leave preparatory to retirement. Rule 31 opens by excepting leave preparatory to retirement, because leave not due is an advance that must be earned back by future service, and an employee about to retire has no future service in which to earn it. So leave not due is a mid-service provision for someone who will return to duty, not a way to add to the leave taken at the end of a career.

How is leave not due different from commuted leave?

Both are drawn from the half pay leave side of the rules, but they are opposites. Commuted leave, under Rule 30, converts half pay leave the employee already has into full pay, debiting two days of the balance for each day of full-pay leave. Leave not due, under Rule 31, gives half pay leave the employee does not yet have, at the half-pay rate, to be repaid by future accrual. Commuted leave spends an existing balance faster for more pay; leave not due spends a balance that does not yet exist. An employee with no half pay leave at credit cannot take commuted leave, since there is nothing to commute, and falls back on leave not due.

Is leave not due debited to the leave account?

Yes, but against future accrual. Leave not due is debited against the half pay leave the employee earns after taking it, so as the employee returns to duty and accrues half pay leave at 20 days a year, that accrual first goes to clear the leave not due already drawn. Until the advance is cleared the half pay leave account effectively carries a negative balance, which is why the provision is limited to the leave the employee is likely to earn and to 360 days in a career.

External references

References

Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 31 (leave not due): half pay leave in advance, debited against half pay leave earned subsequently, limited to 360 days in the entire service on medical certificate and to the half pay leave likely to be earned thereafter.
CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 31, permanent employee (reasonable prospect of returning to duty) and temporary employee (tuberculosis, leprosy, cancer or mental illness; minimum one year of service; continuing post).
CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 31 recovery provision: cancellation and recovery of leave salary on resignation or voluntary retirement without returning to duty, with carve-outs for retirement on invalidation, death, and compulsory or premature retirement.
CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 29 (half pay leave), Rule 30 (commuted leave) and Rule 40 (leave salary at half the rate for half pay leave and leave not due).