Dearth of civil service officers hits admin big time

The shortage of All India Service Officers in Jammu and Kashmir is leading to administrative inertia.
The acute shortage of Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Service (IFS) officers is creating administrative vacuum and affecting the functioning of different government departments.
Official sources said, as per the last cadre review carried out in 2009, the sanctioned cadre strength of IAS in the State is 137 with 75 regular recruits.
However, 46 of these posts are lying vacant, they said.
The situation gets complicated with 21 of these officers being on deputation.
This leaves fewer officers to shoulder the burden of different government departments.
Similarly, of the sanctioned strength of 147 IPS officers, J&K only has 98 IPS officers including 63 regular recruits, sources said.
However, 19 of the 63 regular recruits are on inter-cadre Government of India deputation, leaving an effective strength of IPS in State at 79.
Similarly, in the IFS, of the 53 regular recruits, 13 officers are on deputation, the sources said.
Furthermore, the insider-outsider ratio is highly skewed in favour of the outsiders.
Official sources said that of the 63 direct recruit IAS officers in J&K, only 18 are insiders.
“Of these 18, only four are from Kashmir valley,” the sources said.
Only five Kashmiris made have it to IAS direct recruits in around five decades from 1960 to 2009 and only 2 made it to IAS in around two decades from 1990 to 2009.
The Prime Minister’s Working Groups and interlocutors on Kashmir have in their reports suggested that there was a need for direct recruits to IAS and IPS.
The PM’s Working Groups also suggested that these recruits should be allowed to opt for service in their parent state of J&K.
In 2013, when eight candidates from J&K made it to IAS and IPS, State government wrote to the then prime minister that these candidates be allotted home cadre in relaxation of the policy.
Then Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had personally taken up the matter with the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Congress President Saifuddin Soz had also written a letter to the PM and sought special dispensation in cadre policy for J&K.
The prime minister had assured that Government of India would consider this policy at the earliest but so far nothing has happened.
Furthermore, there is a disparity between the states in Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir regarding officers seeking deputation in the home state.
While in the Northeast, the deputation in home state is extendable up to a continuous period of 9 years but in J&K, it is only for a period of five years.
Similarly, for the home state deputation for the permanent residents, in Northeast the requirement of 9 years service in own cadre has been done away with and the continuous maximum period of 5 years has been set.
However, for J&K the norms continue to be 9 years service in own cadre.
Besides, in Northeast officers seeking deputation to parent state cadre get a waiver on the “cooling off” period of five years after having completed a full five-year deputation with Government of India departments but in J&K no such waiver is given to the officers.
An official in the Prime Minister’s Office said a memorandum had been presented to Government of India about the issue but they had asked for sending the memorandum through the State government.
While Jammu and Kashmir is witnessing Governor’s rule and no State government is in place, the issue may get delayed further.