Centre approves induction of 41 JKAS officers into IAS

The Centre has approved the induction of 41 officers of Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Services (JKAS) into Indian Administrative Service (IAS) following which they will get AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram Union Territories) cadre.

It will be after a gap of almost a decade that the induction process has been done and among the officers to be inducted, a few have already retired from the service.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) have already given approval for the inductions and the matter will shortly go to the Union Public Services Commission (UPSC) for final approval.

“It might take a month or two as the UPSC has to complete the formalities before convening a meeting with representatives of the J&K government for formal induction of JKAS officers into the IAS,” official sources said and added the year of allotment of IAS will be allotted by the MHA once the inductions are finally cleared by the UPSC.

Besides benefiting the JKAS officers, their induction into IAS will also help the J&K government to overcome the shortage of IAS officers in the UT. Till the end of last year, out of the stipulated cadre strength of 137 IAS officers, there were only 58 serving officers in J&K and of these, at least nine were on deputation to the government of India.

After the revocation of special status under Article 370 and bifurcation of the erstwhile J&K state into two union territories (UTs) in 2019, the Union Home ministry merged the J&K cadre into AGMUT in January this year.

Sources said once the process of inductions of previous years is completed by the UPSC, the government proposes to make it a regular feature every year so that the JKAS officers are timely inducted into the IAS like other states and union territories.

Earlier this year in July, the Centre had approved the induction of 27 J&K Police Service (JKPS) officers into the Indian Police Service (IPS) which included 13 serving and 14 retired officers.

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