Taking the 22% shortage of IAS officers in the notice, a parliamentary standing committee has recommended that the department of personnel and training (DoPT) “significantly” increase the annual intake of IAS officers, “keeping in view the evolving needs of Indian administration”.
The annual intake of IAS officers was last increased from the Civil Services Examination-2012 onwards to 180. A committee has now been constituted to arrive at a suitable formula to determine the intake of IAS officers every year from the 2022 exam onwards.
According to the 112th report of the department-related parliamentary standing committee on personnel, public grievances and law and justice, tabled in Parliament last week, the authorised strength of IAS officers is 6,746, which includes 4,682 direct recruitment posts and 2,064 posts of officers promoted to IAS from state civil services or non-state civil services posts. However, the in-position strength of IAS officers is only 5,231, of which 3,787 are direct recruits and 1,444 promoted from SCS/non-SCS.
Statewise, the highest deficit between authorised and in-position strength is in Jammu & Kashmir (57%), followed by Tripura (40%), Nagaland (37.2%), Kerala (32%) and Jharkhand (31%). The states with the least percentage of vacant IAS posts are Tamil Nadu(14.3% of authorised strength), Madhya Pradesh (14.7%), Haryana (15.8%) and Uttar Pradesh (15.9%).
The standing committee said that it had come to its notice that non-IAS officers were being appointed to cadre posts in some states in a few cases in violation of Rule 9 of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Cadre rules, 1954. Rule 9 allows the states to only appoint non-IAS officers in cadre posts if a suitable cadre officer is not available to fill up the vacancy; replace the non-cadre officer when a cadre officer becomes available; take the Centre’s prior approval if the non-cadre officer is to continue in the cadre post beyond three months.
