Singh plan ways to fill up police vacancies, regular promotion in IPS

Facing severe shortage of IPS officers and delay in their empanelment at senior levels, Home Minister Rajnath Singh today directed his officials to prepare a comprehensive plan for filling up the vacancies and regular promotion.

These issues came up during a presentation given to the Home Minister about the functioning of the police division which deals with the Indian Police Service's (IPS) recruitment, promotion and other career-related matters.

Currently there are 930 vacancies in IPS and despite hiring 150 officers every year into the service, the backlog, which started in the late 1990s during the time of the then Home Minister L K Advani, has not been cleared.

Empanelment of nearly 80 IPS officers of 1994 batch in the rank of DIG has also been delayed and the file related to their promotion to IGP has been pending with the Department of Personnel and Training for last four months.

"The Home Minister has expressed concern over the large number of vacancies, the delay in the empanelment of IPS officers at senior levels as well as in the finalisation of the recruitment rules and notifications pending for different levels of officers in the police," a Home Ministry official said.

Singh also expressed concern over the delays in routine administrative matters relating to IPS cadre saying it demoralised the police force and asked the ministry officials to find an early solution relating to issues of career planning and training of IPS officers at the earliest and make the police service more attractive.

He was also briefed about the delay in recruitment of about 70 officers into IPS through Limited Competitive Examination (LCE) due to various court cases. The LCE was conducted by UPSC in 2012 to fill vacancies in the IPS by recruiting officers from various police forces and army.