One-fifth of IPS posts remain vacant in the country

One in every five posts sanctioned in the Indian Police Service (IPS) remains vacant with states like West Bengal, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir topping the list.

According to latest available statistics placed by the Ministry of Home Affairs in Parliament, 19.22% of the 4,982 sanctioned posts in the IPS remain vacant. Of the 4,982 posts, 4,024 have been filled, including 456 women, leaving 958 posts vacant.

Among the states, Odisha and West Bengal have the highest number of vacancies with 75 each.

If one takes the proportion of vacancies, Odisha has 38.46% of the 195 posts remaining vacant while that of Bengal is 21.67% of 347 posts allocated to it as on 1 January 2019.

Jammu and Kashmir with 69 vacancies out of the 147 posts, however, has the highest proportion of vacant posts at 46.93%.

Uttar Pradesh, which has the highest number of posts allocated at 517, has 72 vacancies but when it comes to proportion, one of the lowest at 13.92%.

Karnataka is postioned seventh in the list with 40 vacancies out of 215 IPS posts (18.6%) along with Tamil Nadu, which has a better proportion of 14.49% vacancies out of 276.

Maharashtra has 62 vacancies out of 317 (19.55%), AGMUT (Arunachal, Goa, Mizoram, Union Territories) has 57 out of 309 (18.44%) while Kerala has 42 vacancies (24.41% of 172).

Asked about the steps taken by the government to fill up these vacant posts, Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said the vacancies are caused due to factors such as retirement, resignations, death and removal from service among others. "All these factors are recurring in nature and relative with the rate of recruitment. To fill up the vacancies of IPS officers, the batch-size of IPS (direct recruit) has been increased from 88 to 103 from Civil Service Examination (CSE) 2005 to 130 from CSE, 2008 and to 150 from CSE, 2009, he said.

When it comes to women IPS officers, India has just 456 among the 4,024 or 11.33%. Rai has made it clear that there is no proposal before the government at present to provide reservation for women in the IPS.

Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of women IPS officers at 41 followed by Tamil Nadu (40), AGMUT (34), Bengal (29) Rajasthan (26), Madhya Pradesh (23), Maharashtra (22), Odisha (20) aqnd Karnataka (18).

The dismal number of women officers at the top comes even as the government has committed itself to increase the women presence in the police forces to 33%.

A six-year-old survey conducted during the National Conference of Women in Police in Guwahati had shown even those women officers in the force were not given important assignments. Senior women police officials minced no words when they said they were being denied important posting just because of their gender.

The Data on Police Organisations by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) had earlier said that only 447 women police personnel serve in anti-terror squads, 2,502 in crime branch and another 2,324 in special branches. Of the 74,651 personnel working in special units dealing with anti-terror and organised crime, crime branch or criminal investigation department (CID) and Special Branch in state police forces, only 7.06% or 5,273 were women.