Recruitment row

A CPI MAOIST banner at Mamail village in Jharkhand's Chibasa district on June 14. Increasing Maoist violence is one of the reasons for the government wanting to recruit more IPS officers.-MANOB CHOWDHURY

THE Union Public Service Commission has rejected the Home Ministry's proposal for limited competitive examinations to recruit officers from the Central Police Organisations (CPO) and State police cadre to the elite Indian Police Service (IPS). The idea was to make up for the 657 (as on January 1, 2009) vacant posts in the IPS with officers already trained in police work who could be deployed in key areas.

The Ministry has taken up the matter with the Prime Minister, and the proposal is now pending with the Cabinet Secretariat for disposal.

The UPSC has cited faulty procedure for rejecting the proposal. A senior UPSC official said: While suggesting that a limited competitive examination be held for filling the shortfall in IPS officers' strength, the Ministry has not followed the right procedure. It suggested the recruitment examination, but it failed to frame the recruitment rules [RRs] without which the UPSC cannot hold the examination.

He added that the UPSC has an alternative proposal to make up for the IPS shortfall. The strength of the IPS, he said, could be increased this year through the Civil Services Examination. We can increase the intake of IPS officers this year itself and for this not too many systemic changes are required. This can be done immediately while the other mode of recruitment suggested by the Ministry needs to be worked upon, the official said.

Why the Home Ministry wanted parallel recruitments

The Home Ministry's proposal for the limited competitive examinations had envisaged recruitment of 70 to 80 Central or State officers, under 35 years, to the IPS every year for the next nine or 10 years. The officers would get two chances to write the examination. The plan was to make up expeditiously for the shortfall in the IPS, which, taking into account potential vacancies caused by the retirement of existing officers and the States' expansion plans, is estimated to be 1,694 against the actual figure of 657.

U.K. Bansal, Special Secretary, Internal Security, Home, explained why the Home Ministry had come up with this plan: In normal circumstances, it would take 21 years to fill the shortfall, but can we wait for that long? Key command posts lying vacant have to be filled up immediately. Besides, the emergence of new types of crimes has also necessitated expansion of the force that is equipped to deal with newer challenges. By recruiting personnel from the CPO and State police departments, the Ministry hoped to deploy the new recruits in key areas right away as they would be familiar with the kind of work such posts demanded.

Quite a few States, including those grappling with problems like Maoism, terrorism and insurgency, are facing an acute shortage of IPS officers. Even key organisations such as the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.), the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Border Security Force (BSF), the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and the National Security Guard (NSG) have been facing a serious shortage of officers.

Bansal said the UPSC's proposal to increase the intake of IPS officers through the Civil Services Examination, which at present stands at 130 a year, was not an effective solution: We cannot take more than 130 at a time because down the line quality will go down. Also, the training facilities at the police academy do not permit us to increase the number too much. He maintained that the UPSC's role is only advisory and it is for the government to take a final decision on the issue.

They have reservations, which they have conveyed to us. We have now discussed the matter and it is pending with the Cabinet Secretariat for further discussion, Bansal said.

This is not the first time that the UPSC has come in direct confrontation with a Ministry. On a previous occasion, the commission reportedly refused to cooperate with the Department of Personnel. The department had sought details of marks obtained by general and reserved category candidates in the main examination and interview, following a complaint by a reserved category candidate. The latter had approached the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) alleging discrimination against reserved category candidates by the interview board. Repeated reminders by the Department of Personnel reportedly failed to elicit any reply from the UPSC then, despite the involvement of the PMO.

UPSC irregularities'

Parliamentary committees have also sometimes found the UPSC less than cooperative. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, in its report tabled in Parliament in 2007, had taken exception to the UPSC's failure to appear before it.

The report said: The UPSC, under the pretext of constitutional status, is trying to hide its inefficient working due to which many governmental organisations are headless for years together because the UPSC has not bothered to recommend the right candidates. Many institutes of the Department of Culture are examples of apathy of the UPSC. There are even instances when the UPSC recommended some names for appointment but when the process of appointment started, it withdrew its recommendations. The National Archives of India and even the premier investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, are suffering shortage of staff due to the apathy of the UPSC.

It added that the UPSC, being a constitutional body, should uphold high standards of transparency and accountability, whereas it was projecting itself as being above the law of the land and was not forthcoming with information under the Right to Information Act.

It did not want to reveal how it was spending public money given to it and was accountable to none, the committee said. It added: This attitude of the UPSC is reprehensible and falls within the purview of the breach of privilege of Parliament. It recommended that the government should deliberate on the situation at the highest level and take necessary action to ensure that such grave lapses and subversion of democratic norms did not recur.

Transparency Seekers for Accountability (TSA), a body of civil services aspirants who have complaints against the UPSC, have compiled a book on the irregularities committed by the UPSC that have come to light in various RTI disclosures or affidavits in various courts.

One such aspirant, Chittaranjan Kumar, who appeared for the Civil Services main examination in 2008, was declared not qualified and his score in the Hindi paper was shown as 90 marks out of 300. When he sought details of his Hindi answer sheet, he was shocked to find that the UPSC said he had taken only one supplementary sheet besides the main sheet, whereas he had actually taken three supplementary sheets. In response to another RTI application, the UPSC told him that he had taken two supplementary sheets. The compilation includes the case of Birjis Arzoo, who was shown to be absent in her Urdu paper in the written examination. An RTI application showed that she had not only written the examination but also obtained qualifying marks.

According to Promod Kumar, a TSA activist, the association plans to file over 10,000 RTI applications in the coming months to expose more irregularities.

When Frontline tried to elicit a response from the UPSC on these complaints, officials maintained that those who failed to qualify in the Civil Services Examination were bound to have complaints against the commission. A senior official said, But our systems are time-tested and tamper-proof and our credibility has remained intact.