The Union home ministry has shelved its proposal for allowing direct entry of fresh Indian Police Service (IPS) recruits into a Central agency after the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) turned it down citing technical concerns.
The proposal was high on the agenda of the home ministry which wants to fast track the filling up of vacancies in the country’s premier investigating and intelligence agencies like the Intelligence Bureau, CBI and the National Investigating Agency (NIA).
The home ministry had proposed that candidates who clear the UPSC and opt for the IPS as a service of their choice, may be allowed to indicate the choice for IB, CBI, NIA instead of being allotted to a state cadre.
The proposal said that such a candidate may be allotted to the central agency as a hardcore officer after his selection.
Senior government sources said that the DoPT , whose views were sought on the matter, has opined that the creation of a separate column for a “central agency” within the “state cadre” is not possible. “Once a candidate clears the UPSC, he is allotted a service and a cadre. The cadre has to be a ‘state’ and not any agency,” an official said.
The move has put a spanner in the government’s efforts to fill vacancies as also allow IPS recruits to serve in central agencies from the onset.
“The only way out for the government is to create a third option of a “central” cadre other than the services and state cadre lists in the existing UPSC framework. For that, we will need the approval of the Parliament,” an MHA official said.
The official said that there is no move right now to take the proposal forward.
Recently, the home ministry’s second proposal for introducing a Limited Competitive Examination for serving junior rank police officers from the State and Central police forces, for entry into IPS, had been struck down by the UPSC. The ministry, which then approached the PMO to overrule the UPSC decision, is now awaiting the replies of state governments.