Govt seeks to fill up posts with hires from non-IAS pool, sparks debate

The decision to extend the application date for head of the competition watchdog underlines the old debate over reserving regulatory heads exclusively for administrative service officers

Two recent developments refocused attention on the familiar debate over whether Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers or others outside the IAS would be effective heads of the numerous regulatory bodies in the country. Earlier this week, the date to apply for the post of chairman at the Competition Commission of India (CCI), headless for several months now, was extended. Last week, Deepak Mohanty, an economist at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), was appointed chairperson of the Pension Fund Regulatory & Development Authority (PFRDA). While Mohanty, like many of his predecessors at PFRDA, is not an IAS officer, most other top regulatory bodies have often opted for retired IAS officers to head them.  

Will having regulatory heads from the non-IAS pool help the government fill up posts more efficiently? There may not be any easy answer to that, but an official cited an example to suggest the complexity of the situation. He said the two shortlisted candidates for the post of CCI chairperson were from the Indian Revenue Services (IRS), prompting the government to advertise the position for the second time. Finding a suitable IAS officer to lead the commission may have been the trigger, he said.  

Due to the collegium structure of CCI, it was felt that the hierarchy would be disturbed with IAS officers as members and an IRS as chairperson, another official explained. “The cadre-system in government is actually worse than the caste system,” the official quipped.

The post of the CCI chairperson has been vacant since October 25 and has been advertised twice since. And now the date has been extended.

That said, there are recent examples of the government appointing non-IAS in senior positions. Last year, the government appointed Madhabi Puri Buch, as chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). She became the first woman and the first non-IAS officer to head the regulator in 17 years. Puri Buch spent much of her career in private banking and finance before joining Sebi as a whole-time director in 2017.

In 2013, Raghuram Rajan was appointed governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Before that he was Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. Although Rajan came from academia -- the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business – he was not the first non-IAS appointment to the post. Other notable examples include Manmohan Singh, former prime minister, M Narasimham, who headed several committees on banking reforms, I G Patel, later director of the London School of Economics, C Rangarajan, later head of the PM’s economic advisory committee, and Bimal Jalan, who had held several administrative and advisory positions with the government before that.     

“We have had quite a few people from outside in regulatory bodies such as the Election Commission and electricity regulators. You cannot leave these posts vacant. If you cannot find a person from the pool of IAS officers, then you should look outside,” K M Chandrasekhar, former cabinet secretary, said.

The antitrust watchdog has never had a non-IAS as its head, even though the legal provisions do not forbid it. “The requisite qualifications include a person with experience in public administration and policy. This is read to mean IAS,” one of the officials quoted above said.

Still, to date, almost all regulatory bodies are headed by IAS officers. “The IAS has traditionally kept the top posts to itself. These positions do require certain administrative skills which they do possess,” the senior government official added.

But the problem of vacancies at the top if an IAS officer is not available to fill the post is a real one. In the CCI, for instance, decisions on dozens of M&As, several including foreign corporations, have been stalled for the lack of a chairman. “If regulatory bodies are without heads, it reflects poorly on the government, according to former finance minister Yashwant Sinha. “The date of retirement of the previous incumbent is known and so timely action could be taken. We should cast the net wider, beyond the IAS,” Sinha said.

Sinha, who had served as an IAS officer for over two decades before joining politics, believes that India needs a large pool of talent from outside. “This government has inducted people through lateral entries but we have not seen further action,” he said.

Another top official who is now retired said that the government needs to expand the talent pool and recruit half the joint secretary level officers from outside the services. “Currently, those who have been recruited from outside the administrative services have a three-year term. Everyone knows that the system will push them out after that period is over,” the official said.

The problem of preferring IAS officers as regulatory heads is compounded by the fact that there also seems to be a shortage of IAS officers themselves. Of the total sanctioned strength of 6,789 IAS officers, there are only 5,317 in position, as of January 1, 2022 (<see table>).

Top posts aside, as of March 2021, there were a total of 979,327 posts vacant under various ministries and departments of the Central Government across group A, B and C, according to the annual report of the Department of Expenditure. Of these, 23,584 were the group A posts, which refers to administrative work of the Union government such as foreign, revenue, postal services, among others, that were vacant.

The Minister of State for personnel, public grievances and pension, Jitendra Singh, told Parliament, “All Ministries and Departments of the Central Government are ensuring action in a mission mode for filling up of vacant posts in a time bound manner.”

With regulators such as Sebi and Drug Controller General of India, who was secretary-cum-scientific director, Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission and formerly with Ranbaxy, breaking the mould to bring on board industry representatives as heads, experts think other regulators could take the cue too.