More than 100 IAS, HCS officials’ posts lying vacant in Haryana

The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Haryana Civil Service (HCS) are the senior most administrative officials in that state which play pivotal role in the working of the state as well as the government. Thus, a lack of the officials is most likely to affect the working of the state at large scale.

In continuation to this, what came to light is that about 20 percent posts of IAS and HCS officials remain unfulfilled against the sanctioned quota. According to the data of the concerned wing, about 41 posts of the total quota of 251 IAS officers in the state lie vacant. Out of the total sanctioned posts, nearly 20 are lying vacant and the need of the hour is to fulfil these posts for smooth functioning. Besides, many officials are the deputation and a string of the other officials have been given charge of more than one department.

If we look at the status of HCS cadre posts, the scenario continues to remain unchanged as out of the, out the total quota of 307 HCS officials, 62 posts are lying vacant which constitute nearly 20 percent of the posts. Thus, out of the total 522 posts of both IAS and HCS cadre, 103 i.e., about 20 percent of the whole, are lying vacant. The shortage and lying vacant posts result in giving additional charge of several departments to the officials and there are several officials overburdened with additional responsibilities of multiple responsibilities.

Apart from aforesaid, it is to state that the several IAS officials will retire this year and Vijay Vardhan who holds the post of Chief Secretary presently, is retiring on November 30, 2021. Besides, the senior officials including Alok Nigam and Jyoti Arora who is on deputation in Government Of India GOI) along with Maheshwar Sharma and Ashok Sharma (both IAS promoted from HCS) will retire this year also.

An Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) emerges as the senior most official after the Chief Secretary be be followed by the Principal Secretary (PS) in terms of rank. Abiding by the available data, there are 16 ACS officials bearing charge of different departments and what is of utmost importance is here to mention that most of them are overburdened with additional charge. Likewise, there are 8 to 10 officials of Principal secretary rank.

It is pertinent to mention that several officials are the deputation at present and according to the norms and regulations, an IAS official can get 3 years deputation initially and the same is likely to extended to maximum 7 years.

Recently a new trend took place in Haryana in terms of assigning responsibilities of an IAS cadre officials to a non-IAS official which led to controversy as the IAS lobby opposed the same stating that if the non-IAS officials namely IPS or IFS or IRS are being given the charge of an IAS then there is no requirement of appointing an IAS.