New IPS officers move to CAT against Centre's cadre allocation policy

AMARAVATI: The young civil servants, eager to tackle the challenges in the field, are beginning their career with a legal battle against their boss - Centre. The goof-up by the DoPT in allotment of cadres to the newly-recruited IAS officers is creating ripples in the other ranks of officers including the IPS and IFS.

The Centre has completely bungled the new cadre allocation policy which is being implemented for the first-time after its design. Stung by the Centre’s cold shouldering with the IAS recruits, the new IPS officers knocked the doors of court even before their cadre allotment as the home ministry left their representations unheard. The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), which took up the matter following the high court directive, issued notices to the Centre on Friday.


About 180 candidates got selected to the IAS, 150 to IPS and 110 to IFS in the 2018-batch. Withdrawing the old cadre allotment policy, the Centre has brought in a new policy from 2018 by grouping all the states into five zones. As per the new policy, the candidates have been allowed to give their preference of choice for zone and cadre allocation. They have to first give their choice in the descending order of preference from amongst the zones. Thereafter, the candidates will indicate one preference of cadre from each preferred zone.

However, the DoPT said to have misinterpreted the rules specified in the cadre allocation policy leaving the meritorious candidates in disadvantageous position. Shocked after seeing the IAS allotment list which was completed on December 3, the IAS toppers rushed to the DoPT with their representations. The 84th-IAS rank holder Manish Kumar alleged that his specific cadre preferences have not been considered after encountering the first ‘99’ (code for no preference) in his form. "This has led to officers below in merit getting a cadre that was specifically preferred by me," said Manish in his petition. Source said that several IAS officers found themselves in a tight spot after being allocated the non-preferred states.

For example, a candidate opted UP, AGMUT, Maharashtra cadres in the first three zones and preferred no state in the zone-IV and V. In the second preference, he opted no state in zone-I and preferred Haryana in zone-II and MP in zone-III. In his case, the Centre has stopped taking his preference into consideration with first three choices soon after finding no choice in zone-IV and V. As per the rule, the allocation should have been done by trickling down to the next choice.

Sensing a trouble, two IPS officers, Himanshu Kumar Verma and VV Sai Praneeth filed a writ petition in the Delhi high court seeking an urgent intervention. However, the high court last week forwarded the petition to the CAT and asked it to hear case on an urgent basis.

The former CBDT chairman and counsel for the petitioners, Sudhir Chandra in his submission to the CAT said, "The misinterpretation of the Office Memorandum (cadre allocation policy) by the Centre is whimsical, arbitrary and not in accordance with the law. CAT while issuing notices to the DoPT and MHA has asked them to adhere to guidelines of cadre allocation policy in both letter and spirit. CAT directed the Centre to file response by December, 20."

The new recruits fear that it would be difficult for the Centre to change the cadres once the list is released.

"The section officers, who were tasked with cadre allocation, have bungled the new policy as they were accustomed to the old policy. They have published the list without realising the intricacies,” fumed a petitioner. Another aggrieved officer said: If our choices were never to be considered, why were we even asked for our preferences? We gave no specific preference for certain zones and cadres because the policy and the even the online portal provided us a choice to do so.


NEW ZONES
Zone-I: Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, Union Territories, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana

Zone-II: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha

Zone-III: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh

Zone-IV: West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam-Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura

Zone-V: Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala

WHAT THE CADRE POLICY SAYS

*If a candidate does not give any preference for any of the zone or cadres, it will be treated that he or she has no specific preference for those zone or cadre. Accordingly if he is not allocated to any of the cadres he has indicated the preference, he shall be allocated in the end.

*The first choice for the cadre in the first preferred zone should be considered in the order of merit.

*In case, the candidate does not get allocated to the first preferred cadre of his first preferred zone, then he should be considered for the first preferred cadre of his second preferred zone and so on till the first preferred cadre of the V preferred zone.

*In case, the candidate does not get allocated to the first preferred cadre in any of the zones, then he would be considered for the second preferred cadre of the first preferred zone and so on.