20% of total IAS, IPS posts vacant in the country

In effect, of the total sanctioned posts of 6,715 IAS officers (direct recruit 4,661+2,054 promotion quota), 5,205 such posts are occupied, leaving 1,510 posts vacant.

In the case of the IPS, of the total 4,982 total posts (direct recruit 3,452+1,530 promotion quota), 4,074 posts are filled. In total, the country is working with a shortage of 2,418 IAS and IPS officers of the total sanctioned posts of 11,697 or 20% less officials than sanctioned.

This situation is expected to continue for long unless some drastic steps are taken either to increase the intake of officers for such posts or gradually decrease the number of such posts, and move from a generalist cadre of bureaucrats to specialists.

This is because as per rules, the government can recruit only 180 IAS officers and 200 IPS officers every year through the Civil Services Examination (CSE). More than 10 lakh candidates appear for the preliminaries of the CSE every year of which around 1% or 10,000 become eligible for the mains examinations. Out of this, roughly 3,000 candidates are called for the final interview which is held for approximately 1,000 such all India services posts.

According to a former IAS officer, who advises the present government on policy issues, it was clear that the government was trying to move away “gradually” from the “much costly” all India services and moving towards the “much efficient” system of recruiting specialists from the private sector.