New Delhi: The Modi government has tweaked its empanelment policy for IAS officers at the Centre, allowing not only those who previously served in the Centre as deputy secretaries or directors but also those who worked as under-secretaries for no less than two years to be considered for the post of the joint secretary (JS).
The latest policy applies to IAS officers from batches 2010 and after. The tweak, a government official said, was to widen the pool of officers eligible for empanelment. The central government wants more IAS officers to come to the Centre from across states.
In 2020, the government revised the empanelment policy with a similar objective for the first time, allowing IAS officers from the 2007 and later batches to join at the JS level or above only if they had served as a director or deputy secretary for at least two years at the Centre. Earlier, officers could directly come from state cadres and serve in the central government as joint secretaries.
Despite the 2020 tweak, as of 2023, only 442 IAS officers were working with the Centre against the required strength of 1,469 officers.
Therefore, again revising the policy in a 7 May 2025 office memorandum, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said, “In partial modification of the earlier directives … the ACC (Appointment Committee of Cabinet) has now directed that the Central Deputation experience of not less than two years at under-secretary/deputy secretary/director or equivalent level shall be mandatory for empanelment at joint secretary level at the Centre in respect of IAS officers from 2010 batch onwards.”
The government had sought to incentivise people to take up junior posts at the Centre by making junior postings mandatory, first, if they aspired to serve at the JS level or above.
While data for how many IAS officers are currently serving at the Centre is not publicly available, officers have anecdotally said that since the change in the government policy in 2020, a larger number of IAS officers have been applying for central postings.
“It has become a do-or-die kind of situation for IAS officers. In the last few months, there has been a clarion call given by our seniors to go to the Centre, or the IAS will lose its all-India character and become a glorified state service,” an IAS officer said.
“Typically, IAS officers don’t like to go for positions like director because in districts, as DMs, they are the boss. But when they go for positions like directors, they have to do all the work, and the perks are not great,” the officer said. “But now, they know that if they do not go, they are shutting the doors of the Centre for themselves forever. There are some people who have gone to that extreme because they are okay with never going to the Centre; most IAS officers want that option at least.”
However, ever since the 2020 policy change, a lot of IAS officers who are going to the Centre at the level of director or deputy secretary are serving as private secretaries to ministers, not actually serving as directors, the officer said.
The new policy tweak, however, is unlikely to expand the government’s pool, in reality, since IAS officers are highly unlikely to come to the Centre from the under-secretary position, another IAS officer said. “After seven-eight years, an officer becomes eligible to become a DM. That is the same level of seniority at which they become under-secretary,” he said. “So, it seems highly unlikely that they would want to give up the post of DM for that of under-secretary.”
‘Unfair policy’
While the government’s 2020 policy has had some positive results, sources have said that young IAS officers feel that the policy is unfair to them, rather sandwiches them in the case of tussles between the Centre and the states.
“Whether or not we can come to the Centre is not entirely up to us. I know of many officers who want to go, but their state governments do not relieve them,” said an IAS officer serving in Kerala. “These officers are being doubly penalised for no fault of theirs. If their state governments don’t allow them to go as directors, they can basically never go to the Centre thereafter as a JS or in a position above.”
“While the [2020] move was to increase the mobility of officers between the state and the Centre, it ended up reducing it even more,” the officer claimed. “A state government does not lose out on anything if we cannot become JS. It is the officer and the Centre—which lose out—and so, it is curious why the government is sticking to this rule.”
There had been informal representations to the government after the policy change, according to officers, who point at those representations to explain why the government then made relaxations in the empanelment policy for the 2008 and 2007 batches.
However, from the 2009 batch—to which the relaxations did not extend—only 16 of 119 officers made it to the “initial list” for joint secretaries earlier this year.
For perspective, 49 out of 89 officers of the 2005 batch had made it to the initial list. The numbers were 55 out of 87, 31 out of 81, and 64 out of 111 for the 2006, 2007, and 2008 batches, respectively.
Another serving IAS officer said that the latest policy seemed to be driven by the idea of making IAS officers more split between the state and the Centre. “Right now, an IAS officer comes mostly under the state government unless they are serving in the Centre. This move seeks to interfere with the state government’s domain because you are essentially trying to lure away officers from the state,” the officer said. “This has to be seen coupled with the government’s attempt to overrule the state government if they did not relieve an All India Service (AIS) officer—a few years ago.”
In 2022, the Centre proposed amendments to the IAS (Cadre) Rules to exercise greater control in the central deputation of the IAS officers. The DoPT sought to take away the power of the states to override New Delhi’s request for central deputation of the IAS officers. However, the Centre put the proposed amendments on the back burner after facing backlash from the state governments.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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Civil servants do not wish to serve at the Centre. Long the tradition in Maharashtra, but seems to have widened now.