States reel under huge shortfall of IPS officers

Latest figures show that one reason of India's creaking law and order situation is the huge shortfall in the vacancy of Indian Police Officers.

Overall there is a massive shortfall of 908 IPS officers which is nearly 19% of the total sanctioned strength of 4,802 officers. And if one includes the batch of 140 IPS probationers of 2015 who are yet to join the services, the vacancy goes up to a whopping 1,048 officers or nearly 22% of required strength.

Incidentally, this deficit remains despite UPA government increasing the yearly intake of IPS officers to 150 posts in 2009.

The most populous state of Uttar Pradesh which comes third in reporting cognizable crimes (2,40,475 crimes) has 114 posts lying vacant out of the sanctioned strength of 517 posts. State of West Bengal which reported 1, 85, 672 crimes also has a shortage of 88 IPS officers against the requirement of 347.

Maharashtra that reported 2, 49, 834 cognizable crimes in 2014 has a gap of 63 IPS officers against the required strength of 302. Madhya Pradesh that topped cognizable crimes with a whopping figure of 2, 72, 423 in 2014 has a shortage of 56 IPS officers against required strength of 305 officers.

"Given the spiraling crime graph of the country that rose by 7.7% from 26, 47, 722 in 2013 to 28, 51, 563 in 2014 there is an urgent need to speed up IPS recruitment as they play key role in handling the law and order situation right from the district level to the top levels in the states and the centre. Or else we are going to face a crunch situation soon," said a member of the IPS Officers' Association.

To mitigate the shortage of IPS officers, the government had introduced 'Limited Competitive Examination' (LCE) as another mode of recruitment to IPS officers. Under this scheme, officers of the rank of Deputy SPs of State Police Services, Assistant Commandants of Central Para-military Forces and Captains and Majors of Defence Forces fulfilling certain eligibility criteria are eligible for appearing in the aforesaid examination.

However, dues to large number of court cases received by the union home ministry, Union Public Service Commission, Department of Personnel and Training and Ministry of Defence challenging various aspects of the scheme of this mode of recruitment, the scheme is sub-judice thus putting a stop on the recruitment under LCE.