Chennai: As many as 52 Indian Police Service posts are lying vacant in Tamil Nadu according a home ministry official in Delhi. The cadre strength of Tamil Nadu is 263. Despite taking a number of steps to fill up the posts of IPS, the vacancies continue to remain across all cadres, the official said.
To fill the vacancies the process of appointments to the IPS by promotion from state police service has also been accelerated, the official said. The official said that a total of 930 posts of IPS officers are lying vacant across the country with the highest 105 vacancies in Uttar Pradesh.
The total strength of IPS officers in the country is 4,728 and currently 3,798 are in service, leaving 930 posts of senior police officers vacant. After UP, in West Bengal 96 posts of IPS officers are lying vacant. The strength of IPS officers in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal cadres are 489 and 347 officers respectively.
There are 83 vacancies of IPS officers in Odisha cadre, 75 vacancies in Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories (A GMUT) cadre and 61 vacancies in Karnataka cadre. The strength of IPS officers in Odisha, AGMUT and Karnataka cadres are 188, 295 and 205 officers respectively.
Andhra Pradesh has 51 vacancies and Maharashtra 72 vacancies of IPS officers. The cadre strength of IPS in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are 258 and 302 officers. The direct recruitment to IPS has been increased from 88 officers to 103 in 2005. Again in 2008, 130 officers were recruited to IPS and further 150 officers were recruited in 2009.
In 2013, 145 officers were recruited into the service and all of them are currently undergoing their probationary period. Apart from making recruitment, government has also introduced an alternate method of recruitment to IPS i.e. Limited Competitive Examination to recruit 80 candidates annually.
