The Department of Personnel and Training’s revised Cadre Allocation Policy, effective from January 2026, offers procedural improvements — clearer timelines, transparent vacancies, PwBD provisions. Yet like its 2017 predecessor, it addresses symptoms while ignoring the central anomaly: these services were constitutionally designed to be pan-Indian in character, yet operationally organised as state-based cadres where officers spend virtually their entire careers as permanent residents of the allocated states.
This contradiction is most painfully evident in the lived experiences of high-ranking civil service examination toppers who, despite exceptional merit, are denied home cadre allocation due to vacancy category mismatches entirely beyond their control. A candidate ranked in the top 50 — demonstrating extraordinary capability — expressing willingness to serve in their home state like Punjab or Himachal Pradesh faces an insurmountable obstacle: if their home cadre has no Unreserved (UR) vacancy in the year of allocation, and has only SC/ST/OBC openings, they cannot be accommodated. They proceed to outsider allocation through roster mechanics, separated from home not through any deficiency but administrative accident.
The unfairness cuts deepest for top achievers. The new policy’s paragraph 3.5 creates perverse asymmetry: reserved category candidates ranked lower can compete for UR insider vacancies and, if unsuccessful, claim category-specific vacancies. General category candidates lack this flexibility. A 150-ranked SC/ST/OBC candidate thus enjoys greater home cadre flexibility than a 20-ranked general category candidate facing the same vacancy mismatch. This inverts the meritocratic principle animating civil service selection.
The political backlash
A controversy sparked in Himachal Pradesh earlier this month illustrates how this translates into political friction. The state’s Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Vikramaditya Singh accused “outsider” IAS and IPS officers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar of not serving state interests and being insensitive to local culture. His statement was inappropriate, yet it resonated because it articulated a legitimate structural frustration: the presence of officers from other states in senior positions, combined with high-merit home state candidates failing to access their own cadres due to administrative accidents, creates festering resentment. The controversy reveals that insider-outsider tensions are not mere political posturing but symptoms of unresolved structural contradictions.
The central deputation mirage
Government reformers often cite central deputation — where officers serve in Delhi at Director, Joint Secretary, and Secretary levels — as the mechanism realising the services’ all-India character. In theory, it is sound. But in practice, increasingly compromised.
Competition for deputation has intensified as central services and lateral entrants from academia and the private sector compete with All India Services officers for senior positions. More significantly, the empanelment process remains opaque. Unlike transparent, rules-based cadre allocation, deputation follows nebulous “search-cum-selection” procedures favouring connected officers.
Officers embedded in home state politics, having built networks and influence over decades, increasingly view central deputation as disruptive, a removal from spheres where they exercise real power. As Centre-state relations grow more competitive under coalition politics, officers prefer remaining in home cadres. Central deputation, once the crowning achievement of an officer’s career, has become increasingly unattractive — particularly for those in cushy home cadres. This federal tension makes deputation-dependent solutions unrealistic.
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Unresolved experiments
Some reformers propose inter-state deputation — compelling officers to serve in non-neighbouring states for defined periods to disrupt local entrenchment and broaden perspective. This has never been systematically attempted, and would provoke fierce state resistance. More fundamentally, even if mandated as a condition for promotion to Additional Secretary and Secretary levels, it would not remedy the core grievance: officers still spend primary careers in home cadres. The iron frame remains largely untouched.
Language and cultural barriers compound the problem. An officer fluent in Punjabi posted to Assam faces genuine professional challenges navigating local politics and administration in unfamiliar languages. These are not bureaucratic inconveniences, but real obstacles to effective governance.
The entrenched local alternative
An overlooked dimension is the proliferation of state civil services or PCS. Approximately one-third of senior administrative positions in Indian states are filled by promotion from amongst PCS officers — entirely local, entirely embedded in state politics, entirely independent of all-India frameworks.
As the 2026 cadre policy determines allocations for 25 state cadres, parallel state bureaucracies operate under different rules with no all-India dimension. A high-ranking IAS officer denied home cadre will watch local PCS officers — potentially less talented, certainly less rigorously selected — consolidate power in their home state. The IAS officer’s failure is thus not merely personal disappointment but a signal that the All India Service principle may be institutionally less valuable than entrenched local administration. This irony undermines the constitutional purpose of unified services.
Why the insider-outsider debate will persist
No cadre allocation policy can extinguish the insider-outsider controversy. The 2026 system is marginally more transparent than 2017’s zonal approach. But both face a common problem: they determine bureaucratic allocation while leaving untouched political anxieties driving resentment. As long as officers from other states occupy senior state positions, as long as high-ranking home state candidates fail to secure cadres due to administrative accidents, the tension will fester.
Singh’s statement was inappropriate yet resonated because it articulated legitimate structural frustration, however crudely expressed.
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Conclusion: the limits of procedural reform
The 2026 Cadre Allocation Policy brings genuine procedural improvement. Yet these refinements cannot resolve the fundamental constitutional anomaly: an All India Service that is operationally state-based, with merit-based selection constrained by administrative accidents beyond candidates’ control.
A high-ranking general category candidate denied home cadre due to UR vacancy unavailability has legitimate grievance. This policy does not answer it. Neither did the old policy. Neither will any policy accepting the cadre structure as given.
Real solutions — transparent merit-based deputation, mandatory inter-state posting, meaningful senior position competition — would require political will to challenge federalism itself, subordinating state autonomy to national integration ideals. In an era where states resist central encroachment, where coalition politics elevates regional governments, where officers themselves prefer home state stability, such solutions seem distant.
The All India Services remain trapped between aspiration and reality. Until that fundamental contradiction is squarely acknowledged, no procedural tinkering will provide the answer aggrieved officers seek.
KBS Sidhu is a former IAS officer who retired as Special Chief Secretary, Punjab. He tweets @kbssidhu1961. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)