In a major administrative reform, the central government has revised the cadre allocation policy for the three all-India services – the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS), and Indian Forest Service (IFoS) – following consultations with state governments. The new framework, issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), aims to bring greater transparency and consistency to the system of vacancy determination and cadre allocation.
According to the revised guidelines, the cadre controlling authorities – DoPT for IAS, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for IPS, and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) for IFS – will determine the number of vacancies each year, including their distribution among various categories: Unreserved (UR), Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC).
“The vacancies so determined would be communicated to the State governments and published on the concerned Ministry’s websites. Both the results of the Civil Services Examination/Indian Forest Service examinations on the basis of which the recruitment is to be made. Since this would be a time bound exercise, the requisition received from the State governments after the deadline, as prescribed by the Central government, would not be considered while determining the vacancies,” Yashu Rustagi, Director, DoPT, said in the new policy issued on January 23.
The policy was last changed in 2017 and earlier they were divided into zones, but this time they have been divided into four groups in the new policy proposed by the personnel ministry. All the State Cadres/Joint Cadres will be arranged in alphabetical order and divided into four groups.
- Group-I has AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territories), Andhra Pradesh, Assam-Meghalaya, Bihar and Chhattisgarh.
- Group-II has Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh.
- Group-III consists of Maharashtra, Manipur, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim and Tamil Nadu.
- Group-IV has Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.
Earlier Policy
- Earlier, Zone-I had seven cadres — AGMUT, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana.
- Zone-II consisted of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha.
- Zone-III comprised Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
- Zone-IV comprised West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam-Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland.
- Zone-V had Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
The determination of vacancies will be based on the cadre gap as of January 1 of the year following the Civil Services Examination (CSE). States must submit their vacancy requisitions by January 31 of the same year. The new norms also clarify that vacancies earmarked for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) will be treated as part of the Unreserved category and reflected accordingly in the cadre roster.
The policy reiterates that allocation of “insider” candidates – those opting for their home state cadre – will strictly follow the order of merit and vacancy availability. A candidate’s willingness to serve in their home State is now a mandatory condition for eligibility against an insider vacancy.
Under the new policy, an official said now cadre allocation will proceed through a rotational cycle system – corresponding to the 25 states and joint cadres – with each cycle covering 25 candidates in merit order. If multiple candidates fall within the same cycle, allocation priority will go to the one with the higher rank, while the others move to subsequent cycles.
An official said after insiders are placed, allocation for outsider candidates will be done per the roster system in two stages – first for Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (PwBD) and then for others. The move is expected to bring greater objectivity to the cadre allocation process, which has long been a sensitive subject among aspirants and state governments alike. The revised system aligns with the government’s broader goals of promoting fairness and administrative efficiency in the all-India services.
