Five forms, and the rules that go with them
Most of what a Section Officer or Under Secretary issues in a day is one of five things: a Letter, a demi-official letter, an Office Memorandum, an Office Order, or an Inter-Departmental note. The formats are not a matter of taste — they are set out in Appendix 8.1 of the Central Secretariat Manual of Office Procedure, and the drafting rules that go with them are in Chapter 9. This generator builds the format around your text and checks the draft against those rules as you type.
What each form is for
- Letter — for corresponding with State Governments, the UPSC and other constitutional bodies, heads of attached and subordinate offices, public enterprises, statutory authorities, public bodies and members of the public. Addressed on behalf of the Department to the Head of the organisation by designation, opening with "Sir/Madam" and closing with "Yours faithfully".
- Demi-official (D.O.) letter — where one officer wants the personal attention of another on a matter of importance or urgency. Written in the first person, in a friendly tone, addressed as far as possible to an officer of similar rank.
- Office Memorandum — for communicating decisions to other Departments including attached and subordinate offices, for calling for or providing information, for communicating with your own employees, and for seeking and providing information between sections. Written in the third person, with no salutation and no subscription.
- Office Order — for routine internal administrative matters: grant of regular leave, distribution of work among officers and sections, internal posting and transfers. No salutation, no subscription, copies endorsed to everyone concerned.
- Inter-Departmental note — the most common form of written communication for transacting business within the Secretariat. Used to obtain the advice, views, comments or concurrence of another Department, or to seek clarification of existing rules from the nodal Ministry.
The part that actually saves you a correction
Getting the layout right is the easy half. The half that comes back marked is the set of small requirements in Chapter 9 that are easy to forget under pressure. The generator checks each of them live, and tells you which paragraph of the Manual it is applying:
- The generator produces the communication as it will issue — no 'Draft' marking, and space left above the signature block for the officer's actual signature rather than a typed
-sd/-. Where you are instead putting a draft up for approval, para 9.1(iii) requires it to be marked 'Draft' at top centre, para 9.2(x) in double space, and para 9.2(xiii) flagged DFA I, DFA II and so on where more than one is submitted.
- A communication conveying the views or orders of the Government must be expressly written under the directions of Government — "I am directed to…" in a Letter, "The undersigned is directed to…" in an Office Memorandum.
- The number and date of the last communication in the series should always be referred to.
- When calling for information or comments, specify the date by which they are required. The Manual is blunt about this: say "may be sent by 28-02-2019", not "may be sent immediately".
- Every draft on a file must bear the file number; where two communications issue from the same file to the same addressee on the same date, a serial goes before the year —
A-11011/5(i)/200119-Estt.
- Enclosures are listed at the bottom left under
Encl:, numbered i., ii., iii. — so the reader can tell what should be attached, not merely how many.
- The name, designation, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address of the signing officer must invariably appear on the draft.
- The office block is set bilingually and tight — भारत सरकार / Government of India, the Ministry in Hindi then in English, then the Department and Division in brackets — with no blank line between them, as on an issued communication.
For an Inter-Departmental reference there are three more that the tool will not let you past quietly: the reference needs the approval of an officer not below Joint Secretary and the signature of an officer not below Under Secretary; a time-limit must be prescribed when asking for advice or concurrence; and the points on which advice is sought should be stated in the concluding paragraph, with the drafts of the proposed orders placed along with the note.
Who gets which form — and who must not get an O.M.
Table 8.1 of the Manual settles a set of questions that otherwise get argued about in every office. Tell the generator who you are writing to and it applies the rule:
- The UPSC is addressed to its Secretary, in the form of a letter.
- Constitutional and statutory authorities — the Election Commission, TRAI, SEBI and the like — are addressed in letter form to the Principal Secretary or Secretary. In no case is an Office Memorandum to be sent to them.
- References to the Attorney General go only through the Ministry of Law & Justice; references to the C&AG only by and through the Ministry of Finance, except on audit paragraphs.
- Communications to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariats are addressed to the Secretaries concerned — not to the Speaker or the Chairman directly — and no communication goes to the Chairman of a Parliamentary Committee directly.
- A reply to a Member of Parliament issues in polite letter form only, at a level not below Under Secretary, and pre-printed replies are to be avoided.
- A State Government is addressed to the Secretary of the department concerned; matters of special importance may go to the Chief Secretary, and a D.O. to a Chief Secretary must not be below Joint Secretary level.
- Correspondence with foreign governments and international organisations is normally channelled through the Ministry of External Affairs.
Pick a form that the Manual rules out for that addressee and the check turns red rather than merely suggesting.
The response clock
Paragraph 8.9 fixes hard timelines for communications received from a Member of Parliament, a member of the public, a recognised association or a public body: acknowledge within 15 days, reply within 15 days of the acknowledgement, send an interim reply within 15 days where a final reply will be delayed or where information has to be obtained from another Ministry, and transfer a wrongly addressed communication within 5 working days under intimation to the party. Enter the date of receipt and the tool works out each date for you.
Why it does not write the letter for you
It would be easy to make this produce finished official prose. We deliberately have not, for two reasons. The first is that a fluent, confident, slightly wrong sentence about a rule position is worse than a blank page, and on a file it goes out over your signature. The second is that draft communications are frequently pre-decisional official material, and generating text would mean sending what you type to a server. Nothing here leaves your browser — that is why it is safe to use for a live file.
What it does instead is give you the scaffolding, the formulations the Manual itself uses, and worked paragraph skeletons for recurring situations with the substance left in square brackets for you to replace. Saved drafts and your office details stay in your own browser's local storage on this device, and are never transmitted anywhere.
Before you use the output
- Check it against your own Department's practice. Ministries carry conventions of their own on file numbering, subject lines and endorsement, and the Manual does not displace them.
- The Manual is revised from time to time. The formats and paragraph references used here follow the edition of the Central Secretariat Manual of Office Procedure published by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. Verify against the current edition before relying on a paragraph number.
- The Hindi output is a starting point. Official Hindi usage varies between Ministries and the Department of Official Language issues its own terminology. Read the Hindi text before it issues, and edit it to your Department's usage.
- Approval and signature levels are yours to confirm. The tool asks you to certify that an Inter-Departmental reference has Joint Secretary approval; it cannot verify it.
Where does the list of Ministries come from?
It follows the First Schedule to the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules, 1961, with the Hindi name alongside each. Ministries are reorganised and renamed from time to time, so treat it as a convenience list and check the current Schedule published by the Cabinet Secretariat if the name matters. Every field the dropdown fills stays editable, so a stale entry can never stop you issuing a communication — pick the nearest match and correct the text, or ignore the dropdown and type both names yourself.
Can I put the Word file straight into eOffice?
The .docx downloads with the layout intact, so it can be uploaded to the eFile draft or pasted into the eOffice editor. The Manual notes that in eFile a draft can be created from a template, uploaded from Word, or typed directly into the draft editor — all three routes work with this output.
Does the Hindi come out in the right font?
Hindi text is set in Mangal at 11 point and English in Times New Roman, which is what Appendix 8.2 specifies for matter sent for Gazette publication. For ordinary correspondence follow your Department's own convention if it differs.
What happens to a draft I save?
It is stored in your browser's local storage on that device and nowhere else. Clearing site data, using private browsing or switching machines will lose it. Anything you need to keep should be downloaded.
Is a Letter or an Office Memorandum right for another Ministry?
Neither, usually. For consultation between Ministries and Departments — seeking advice, views, comments or concurrence — the form is an Inter-Departmental note. An Office Memorandum is for communicating a decision already taken, including to attached and subordinate offices.