With Union Home Minister Amit Shah taking a serious view of Departmental Promotion Committee meetings not being held as per the model calendar, leading to delays in promotions of paramilitary officers and men, the Ministry has directed all the paramilitary forces to strictly adhere to the model calendar and DoPT rules for timely promotion of personnel.

Despite clear directions from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Central Armed Police Forces or paramilitary forces/Assam Rifles through reports suggest that as many as 71 DPCs for vacancy year 2022 are held up due to various reasons.

As per the circulated model calendar of DoPT, these DPCs should have been conducted by December 31, 2021. Lack of holding DPC meetings for men and officers according to the Model Calendar  is affecting timely promotions despite clear vacancies, sources said.

Taking a serious view on the lack of timely conduct of the DPC,  Shah has directed all the departments and security forces to ensure that Annual Performance Appraisal Reports (APARs) are conducted in the scheduled time frame in line with the DOPT’s Model Calendar and instructions issued from the Ministry from time to time.

The Ministry further directed the security forces and departments under it to strictly adhere to the time schedule of the Model Calendar for current vacancies and suitably formulate modalities of future DPCs as per the instructions in this connection. The instructions have been issued by the Police II Division of the Union Home Ministry and the communication has been sent to all the paramilitary forces.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Central Industrial Security Force and Sasashtra Seema Bal (SSB) besides Assam Rifles have been directed to follow the model calendar of holding DPCs to ensure deserving candidates from the subordinate as well as officer categories are promoted in a timely manner. Lack of timely promotion of officers and men is a known demoralizing factor for serving Force personnel and serves as an additional stress factor besides the already difficult and challenging service conditions of such personnel who are often posted in remote locations, away from their families and face insurgents and terrorists as their normal call of duty, insiders said.

In the past, the Forces have faced a spate of premature retirements through the Voluntary Retirement Schemes (VRS) and lack of timely promotion is estimated to be a major factor for such drastic moves by the personnel.

The DPCs are not being held despite the DoPT’s Model Calendar being circulated to them way back in 2017. Cadre officers believe the Indian Police Service (IPS) officers who helm these Forces at the top deliberately scuttle the bid to conduct timely DPCs so as to maintain the dominance and superiority of the IPS officers in the Forces. 

While cadre officers are also recruited through competitive examinations conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) form the bulk of the officer category, the IPS officers come on deputation from various State cadres for a limited number of years, officials said, adding their rightful due is being denied through lack of DPC meetings.