BHUBANESWAR: Odisha has the second highest vacancies of 72 in Indian Police Service (IPS) posts after Jammu and Kashmir’s 76 among Indian states and UTs, minister of state for personnel Jitendra Singh told Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
To a question by BJD MP Sasmit Patra, the Union minister in a written reply said 1510 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and 908 IPS posts are lying vacant. Odisha has 58 positions for IAS vacant which is 14th among the states. The AGMUT cadre has the highest 116 vacancies followed by 102 in Bihar and 100 in Maharashtra in IAS.
The Union minster said the government has increased annual intake of IAS officers through Civil Services Examination (CSE) to 180 since 2012 (from 55 in 1998). The batch-size of IPS (direct recruit) has been increased to 200 from CSE-2020 from 150 earlier.
In Odisha, the sanctioned strength of IAS is 237 and that of IPS is 188. Apart from the large-scale vacancies, the actual manpower deployed in the state is further curtailed as around 40 IAS officers and 30 IPS officers are currently on central deputation.
Government sources said the comparatively higher IPS vacancies in the state is mainly because of two reasons. Lower number of directly recruited candidates are being allotted to the state every year by the Centre while there are very few promotions from Odisha Police Service (OPS) to IPS. Though the state had asked the Centre to allocate at least 10 IPS officers every year, it is getting four to five per year, a government officer said.
More than 55 IPS posts are supposed to be filled up through state promotion quota. However, these are vacant in absence of personnel eligible for promotion. The state had discontinued direct recruitment of deputy superintendent of police (DSP) under Odisha Police Service for three decades since 1977 before resuming it in 2011. These DSPs are the ones who are potential candidates to get promotion to IPS posts after five to 10 years in service.
“Because of the prolonged halt in DSP recruitment, personnel in Odisha police eligible for promotion to IPS posts became rare. Now, with recruitment resumed, this situation should hopefully change by another few years,” said Sanjiv Marik, a former DGP.