Relieving letter and experience certificate format — India

Relieving Letter & Experience Certificate format

The full text of this document as VidhiSar drafts it, with every blank shown in square brackets. Copy it or download it as a Word file and fill it in yourself — or answer a few questions and VidhiSar fills it in and prints a formatted PDF. Clauses that apply only in some cases are left out here; the drafting flow adds them when your answers call for them.

Relieving letter format in Hindi (कार्य मुक्ति प्रमाण पत्र का प्रारूप)

The same letter in Hindi, clause for clause, for an employee who asks for it in Hindi or an office that works in Hindi. Replace every item in square brackets before use.

Further reading

What the law behind this document actually requires.

• Full and final settlement: what you owe a departing employee, and when — Two working days for wages, thirty for gratuity. The deadlines are statutory, and "we settle at the end of the quarter" is not one of them.

• Full and final settlement: what you owe a departing employee, and when

Related statutory compliance tools & calculators

• Gratuity Calculator India — Calculate statutory 15/26 gratuity under the Code on Social Security, 2020

• Gratuity Calculator India

What this document must contain (Clause-by-Clause Matrix)

• The exact dates of service — Date of joining and last working day. This is the fact the next employer, the background checker and the provident fund transfer all actually need, and the one most often stated loosely.
• The position held at separation, and the function — An experience certificate that omits the role certifies attendance rather than experience.
• A clear statement of relieving, with effect from a date — Relieving and experience are two different statements. The reader needs to know both that the person is released and what they did — one sentence covering both leaves each half-proved.
• Confirmation that clearance is complete and property returned — This is what closes the loop internally, and it is the line you will want if a device or a dataset turns out to be missing later.
• A neutral statement on conduct — or nothing at all — Whatever you write here is published to a third party by design. If you cannot honestly say conduct was satisfactory, state the dates and the role and stop. Editorialising in this document is where the legal risk lives.
• A restatement of surviving obligations — Confidentiality and the assignment of intellectual property do not end with the employment. Repeating them at the exit is cheap and removes the "nobody told me" defence.

When you need this

• When an employee has resigned, served their notice and completed exit clearance
• When the employee’s next employer has made the offer conditional on it, as most Indian employers do
• When you are closing a separation and want the surviving confidentiality and IP obligations restated on the record
• When a former employee asks for proof of experience years after leaving
• When a team is being wound down and every exit needs to be documented the same way

The law that governs it

• Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — defamation — A written imputation about a person, communicated to someone else, that harms their reputation is actionable. A relieving letter is designed to be shown to a prospective employer, so the publication element is built into the document. Adverse comment is where the exposure sits, not in the dates.
• State Shops and Establishments legislation — Several States require employment particulars to be maintained and, in some cases, a certificate of service to be furnished to a departing employee on request. Check the Act of the State where the person actually worked before treating the letter as purely discretionary.
• Indian Contract Act, 1872 — s. 27 — Nothing in a relieving letter, or in withholding one, can operate to restrain a former employee from taking up lawful employment. Using the letter to obstruct a person’s next job is not a contractual remedy — it is an attempt at one that the law does not support.

Common mistakes

• Withholding the letter as leverage in a notice-period dispute, which turns a recoverable money claim into a grievance and sometimes into a claim against you
• Writing down what you actually thought of the employee in a document created to be shown to strangers
• Issuing a relieving letter while a disciplinary inquiry is still pending, and then trying to rely on that inquiry
• Relieving with effect from the resignation date rather than the last working day, which misstates the tenure on every future background check
• Treating the relieving letter and the full and final settlement as the same event, and issuing one as though it discharged the other

Frequently asked questions

Is a relieving letter legally mandatory in India?

There is no single central statute that compels it in every case, though several State Shops and Establishments Acts require employment particulars to be kept and a certificate of service to be given on request. In practice it functions as mandatory: the next employer will not onboard without it, which is precisely why withholding it draws scrutiny.

Can I refuse to issue one if the employee did not serve their notice?

A notice shortfall is a money claim under the contract, and you can pursue it as one — including by adjusting it in the full and final settlement if the contract provides for that. Withholding the relieving letter is a different act: it obstructs the person’s livelihood without a legal basis, and it is one of the most common triggers for a complaint against an employer.

Should the letter say why the employee left?

It does not need to, and usually should not. The dates, the role and the fact of relieving are what the document exists to prove. A reason invites a disagreement about accuracy in a document whose whole purpose is to be uncontroversial.

Is an experience certificate the same as a relieving letter?

They answer different questions. The relieving letter confirms the person has been released from their duties on a stated date; the experience certificate certifies the tenure, the role and the conduct. Indian employers routinely combine them into one document, which is fine — provided both statements are actually present.

Related documents

• Full & Final Settlement Statement
• Termination Letter
• Employment Agreement (Appointment Letter)
• All templates

Maintained by the VidhiSar Legal Team

Maintains the law explainers, calculators, templates and blog posts on vidhisar.in: checks them against the statute text and updates them when the law changes. Errors and changes in the law can be reported to legal@vidhisar.in.

• Report an error or a change in the law: legal@vidhisar.in