The central government has changed how cadres are allocated for the three All-India Services – the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS), and Indian Forest Service (IFoS). The new system replaces the old zonal arrangement with a structure where states are grouped alphabetically.
The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), after consulting state governments, introduced the new framework, which replaces the system used since 2017.
“To ensure a fair and transparent system, all State Cadres and Joint Cadres have been arranged alphabetically and divided into four groups,” the DoPT said in its notification. Candidates will now be able to choose their preferences from these four groups.
The new groups are-
Group I: AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territories), Andhra Pradesh, Assam-Meghalaya, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh.
Group II: Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, and Madhya Pradesh.
Group III: Maharashtra, Manipur, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, and Tamil Nadu.
Group IV: Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.
Comparison with the previous zonal system
Previously, Zone-I had seven cadres – AGMUT, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Haryana. Zone-II included Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha, while Zone-III had Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam-Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, and Nagaland were in Zone-IV, and Zone-V consisted of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.
Officials said the new framework aims to promote national integration within the civil services while addressing state concerns about uneven vacancy distribution under the old policy.
The government expects the new system to make administrative processes smoother and give young officers better inter-state exposure, keeping in line with the original purpose of the All-India Services, The Indian Express reported citing sources in DoPT.
Vacancy determination and transparency
Under the revised guidelines, cadre-controlling authorities – DoPT for IAS, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for IPS, and Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) for IFoS – will determine the number of vacancies in each service every year. These vacancies will be divided among categories like Unreserved (UR), Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC). The DoPT said the new framework will make vacancy determination and cadre allocation more transparent and consistent.
“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,” Yashu Rustagi, Director, DoPT, said in the new policy issued on January 23.
Adding to it he mentioned that, “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”.
The policy also says that rosters for category-wise reservation and insider/outsider distribution will follow the established procedure.
Cadre allocation will now follow a rotational cycle system covering 25 states and joint cadres, with each cycle including 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 told IE.