Exhaustion of statutory remedies is a prerequisite for entertaining an application under the Administrative Tribunals Act.

The Applicant, originally a Head Constable in the Arunachal Pradesh Police (APP), was promoted to Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) on April 28, 2011.

He was sent on deputation to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in February 2014 and was subsequently absorbed into the NIA as an ASI on June 28, 2017.

The Applicant sought to have his past service in the APP counted toward his eligibility for promotion to the post of Sub-Inspector and Inspector in the NIA.

Although he was promoted to Sub-Inspector in the NIA on January 1, 2023, he contended he was entitled to an earlier promotion date (Vacancy Year 2018) by reckoning his prior service.

He submitted representations to the NIA on May 31, 2023, and November 28, 2025, which remained pending without decision.

1. Whether the application is maintainable before the Tribunal when the Applicant’s departmental representations regarding his grievance are still pending consideration by the competent authority.

2. Whether the period of service rendered in an analogous post in the parent cadre (APP) should be counted for eligibility for promotion within the NIA.

Section 20 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985, which mandates that a Tribunal shall not ordinarily admit an application unless all available departmental remedies have been exhausted.

The principle that while an employee must exhaust remedies, there is a "counter obligation" on the authority to decide such representations to avoid unnecessary litigation, as held in Paramjit Kaur v. Union of India and Devl Dutt Sharma v. Union of India.

The precedent in K. Madhavan v. Union of India (1987) regarding the counting of service in analogous posts for promotion eligibility.

The Tribunal observed that the Applicant had already invoked departmental remedies by filing representations in 2023 and 2025, which were still pending before Respondent No. 2 (NIA).

It reasoned that under Section 20 of the Act, the application was technically "premature" because the statutory six-month period following the latest representation (November 2025) had not expired, nor had a final order been passed.

However, following the consistency established in similar cases against the NIA—such as Dinesh Chandra Sati v. NIA and M.S. Pillai v. NIA—the Tribunal found that the interests of justice and parity required a direction to the authorities to perform their "counter obligation" of deciding the pending grievance through a reasoned order rather than dismissing the case outright.

The Authority must pass a reasoned and speaking order in accordance with the law without being influenced by the Tribunal’s observations on the merits. The OA was disposed of at the admission stage with no order as to costs.