During a meeting with officials from the Department of Expenditure (DoE) at the Ministry of Finance, the National Council - Joint Consultative Machinery (NC-JCM) (staff side) requested a simpler process to waive back excess payments made to central government employees.

The NC-JCM said that after the meeting, the DoE secretary promised to look into their requests in discussions with the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT).

In a letter dated July 3 to NC-JCM members, secretary Shiva Gopal Mishra noted that during the July 2 meeting with the DoE, the key employee body for the central government workers addressed the issue of recovering the excess or incorrect payments made to the central government employees.

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Mishra said that a note of demands was submitted to the DoE secretary, based on which, suggestions were also made to rectify the problem.

The secretary said that the employee body had also raised the same issue with the cabinet secretary at its 49^th AGM in May 2026.

What’s the key issue NC-JCM’s has raised during its meeting with DoE secretary

NC-JCM, in its note to the DoE, pointed out that service records of central government employees are periodically audited and approved by audit authorities. The next audit team, instead of auditing the service record from the date of the last audit, goes back to the period which has already been audited, and comes out with objections like excess leave granted, excess leave wages paid, wrong pay fixation on promotion, wrong promotion, etc.

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What goes wrong because of these mistakes

The employee body further says that on the basis of these audits, authorities start recovering the excess recovery or wrong payments from the salaries of the employees and terminal benefits of the retiring employees without taking waiver action.

NC-JCM further says that in the name of fixing responsibility, the process of waiver of recovery gets delayed.

“Since such excess payments are generally identified after a lapse of so many years, officers dealing with such cases when the excess payment was made have either been transferred or retired. In many cases, the documents of excessive payment may also not be available with the employee,” says NC-JCM.

Why NC-JCM raised objections against such mistakes

NC-JCM said that the problem over excessive payment is not the fault of the employees and is purely due to administrative lapses/mistakes. The employees should not be made to pay for the mistake of the administration.

The employee body said that service records once audited should not be subjected to further audit for the same period which has already been audited and found to be correct.

What measures do NC-JCM want DoE to take in this regard?

In its note, NC-JCM has suggested that the DoE, Ministry of Finance, should take a few measures that can help rectify mistakes. These suggestions are-

-The DoP&T office memorandum (OM) dated March 2, 2016, should be strictly implemented by all ministries/departments and their lower formations/units, etc. The non-implementation of this OM should attract appropriate action.

-Waiver of recovery of overpayment which falls under the five categories/situations given in DoP&T OM dated March 2, 2016, up to an amount of Rs 5 lakh in each individual case should be delegated to the head of the department to avoid unnecessary delay in the process.

-Waiver of recovery of an overpayment above Rs 5 lakh and up to Rs 10 lakh should be delegated to the respective ministry/departments.

-Waiver of recovery of overpayment above Rs 10 lakh should be referred to the Department of Expenditure.

-As and when, the overpayment to the individual employees is identified and if it falls within the five situations given in the DoP&T OM, the concerned head of the department should, without further delay, inform the concerned employees. It should then take steps for waiver of the overpayment as per the laid down procedures.