Section 23 in The Andhra Pradesh Civil Services (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1991
23. Punishments to be awarded in proved cases of misappropriation: -There is a wide disparity in the scales of punishment meted out in misappropriation cases. The question of prescribing uniform scale of punishment in such cases has been considered by Government It has been decided that ordinarily cases of proved misappropriation would justify nothing less than dismissal from service and action should accordingly be taken. The minimum penalty to be imposed in all proven cases of misappropriation (in addition to the recovery of amount misappropriated) is dismissal form service. In case of a retired employees the penalty should be withholding of entire pension and gratuity permanently or withdrawal of pension as the case may be besides recovery of the misappropriation / loss amount. There may, however, be rare cases where in the circumstances, such as trivial amount, short duration, immediate payment on detection, all of which may raise a presumption that it was an error in accounting, which may justify a different punishment. A clear distinction should be drawn between the cases of "delayed remittance" and "misappropriation" having regard to the fact that in proved cases of misappropriation no punishment short of dismissal is normally justified and accordingly the case of 'delayed remittance' need not always be classified for the purpose of audit as a case of misappropriation.
