Long before ‘lateral entry’, how Nehru government recruited bureaucrats from ‘open market’

Several Opposition leaders and some important allies of the government had strongly criticised the attempt to make these appointments without following the policy of reservations.

Need after Independence

In 1946, with independence from British rule imminent, the Central Cabinet, following a conference of Premiers, decided to establish the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) to replace the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and Indian Police (IP) respectively.

Post-Independence, the country needed officers to help frame policies and to implement them on the ground. Not many qualified officers were available, as the last batch of ICS was recruited in 1943, and the first batch of the IAS came only in 1948.

Contemporary reports suggest that until the mid-1950s, some 7,000 applicants appeared on average in the annual civil service exams, and about 200 were selected. Besides the central government, various state governments were also in dire need of good officers to frame and implement policies.

Addressing the shortage

To address the shortage of officers, especially those with specialised skills, special recruitment drives were undertaken in 1948-49 — when Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister — and in 1956. This was in addition to the annual recruitments through examinations conducted by the UPSC.

The special selections too, were made by the UPSC, but on the recommendation of an Emergency Recruitment Board.

The 1949 special recruitment was based on a scrutiny of the applicants’ records and an interview. The 1956 recruitment took place on the basis of a written examination and an interview. These emergency recruitments were made not only for the IAS but also for the IPS and several central services.

The special recruitment was designed to select the best brains in India and from Indians living abroad to deploy in the service of the newly independent nation. G B Pant, who was Home Minister during the second round of special recruitments, told Lok Sabha on May 30, 1956: “The brilliant cadre has been depleted and exhausted and here at the Centre we have no men who can be appointed to the posts of Deputy Secretaries etc from the IAS.”

Process of recruitment

The upper age limit to appear for the civil services examination in the early days was 24 years. Open market recruitments were made from among individuals who had completed the age of 25 but not the age of 40. For Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates the age ceiling was 45 years. (The now-cancelled lateral entry initiative had the same age ceiling for applicants.)

In the first round of special recruitments in 1948-49, 82 officers were hired on the recommendation of the Emergency Recruitment Board. During the second round, Minister of State for Home Affairs B N Datar explained the rationale for open-market recruitments:

“This emergency recruitment will be open and candidates would be taken from what is known as the open market, not only from the services. The services also can come in provided they possess the qualifications and the eligibility required… A larger number (of IAS) is necessary, and a larger number has to be taken from a larger sphere,” he said in Lok Sabha on March 23, 1956.

For the 1956 round, the government fixed an income floor of Rs 300 for open-market candidates to apply — a requirement that caused an uproar in Parliament.

Communist leader A K Gopalan argued that unemployed youth would not be able to apply. “This is an attempt to revive the old tradition of the ICS. Recruitment to the ICS was only done from the aristocracy and feudal families. Ordinary citizens were not eligible for enrolment to the ICS. This IAS recruitment with this rule revives that old tradition. It tries to restrict the field of recruitment to the most important administrative service of the country to the sons and daughters of the rich and the influential people in the country,” Gopalan told Lok Sabha on May 30, 1956.

More than 22,161 applications were received for these recruitments in 1956, including 1,138 from the SCs and 185 from the STs. To enable Indians residing abroad to appear, 22 examination centres were set up outside India. The exam was held on December 28, 1956.

Quotas in appointments

Reservation for SCs and STs was implemented in the open-market recruitments. However, there was no reservation among officers who were promoted from the state civil services.

The SC quota was 12.5% and the ST quota was 5%, both for vacancies filled normally through competitive exams and in the special recruitment from the open market. The filling of the quota was subject to the availability of suitable candidates. According to the government, the conditions for recruitment of SCs and STs were relaxed to the extent possible.

Home Minister Pant informed Lok Sabha on April 24, 1958: “So far as special emergency recruitment from the open market is concerned, in the original list that was prepared by the UPSC there were only 26 members of the Scheduled Castes. So, we asked them to relax the standard so that a larger number might be admitted. They did so and another, I think, 133 were added. After that, the candidates were interviewed and the UPSC published its list.”

In the final recruitment from the open market, 7 SC candidates and 3 ST candidates were selected in 1956. Of the 82 IAS officers hired from the open market in 1949, 12 were SCs, and 1 was an ST.