Earlier this month, when Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti left her Cabinet meeting in a huff following opposition from her BJP colleagues to a cadre review proposal for the Kashmir Police Service (KPS), it underlined not only the differences between the coalition partners, but also the growing stagnation among middle-rung officers in the state. What is the Kashmir Police Service (KPS)? The KPS is one of the feeding services of the Kashmir Administrative Service (KAS) like Revenue, Excise and Taxation, Accounts, etc., to which candidates are selected based on merit-cum-preference in the Jammu and Kashmir Combined Competitive Services. However, the general complaint is the KPS have never been categorised as a state cadre service, resulting in poor management of its cadre strength and professional stagnation. Watch what else is in the news What proposal did the BJP ministers oppose? The Home Department had envisaged bringing KPS officers on a par with KAS officers in matters of promotion and pay grades. It was proposed that like KAS officers who are promoted to the rank of Administrative Secretary without being inducted into the IAS cadre, KPS officers too would be promoted to DIG and IG ranks irrespective of their induction into the IPS cadre. The posts of Administrative Secretary and IGP are equivalent with respect to their pay grade. But why is a review needed? KPS cadres, who are middle-rung police officers, are engaged in keeping law and order as well as fighting militancy on the ground. But such is the stagnation that several of them who are currently in the rank of Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), remain in the pay grade of selection grade Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP). Some KPS officers who retired as SSPs were, in fact, selection grade DySPs. The J&K Gazetted Police Service Rules provide for a DySP to don the rank of SSP after completing 15 years of service. KPS officers are seeking parity with their counterparts in the KAS and feeding services. They argue that they have passed the same J&K Combined Services Competitive Examination and, depending upon their preference in their application forms, were posted as DySPs in the police organisation. Subject to vacancies, 25% of these KPS officers, after 5 years of service, are promoted to Selection Grade DySPs. After 5 years of service and depending on vacancies, Selection Grade DySPs are promoted as SPs who, after completing 5 years of service, are promoted as SSPs. The next rank is that of Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, subject to the officer’s induction into the IPS cadre. However, these promotions are made from among direct KPS appointees and departmental promotees on a 50:50 basis. How have recruitments to these middle-rung posts of gazette-level police officers been done over time? The first batch of KAS and KPS officers was recruited in 1971-72 through the J&K Combined Services Competitive Examination held by the Jammu and Kashmir State Public Service Commission. Direct recruitment of the second and third batches happened in 1977 and 1984. No exams were held for nearly the next 15 years, and the fourth batch of direct KPS recruits came in 1999. However, facing a requirement for middle-rung officers to tackle militancy, the government promoted a large number of Inspectors as DySPs. When did direct KPS appointees started raising their voice against the stagnation in their careers? As largescale promotions from 1984-99 far exceeded the 50% quota fixed for induction of departmental promotees to the KPS cadre, the 1999 batch of direct KPS appointees and the batches that followed them began to demand the correction of the seniority list. Both direct appointees and departmental promotee KPS officers went to court, resulting in the non-induction of KPS officers into the IPS cadre from 2008. In the absence of promotion of any KPS officer from the rank of SSP to DIG during all these years, nearly 50 IPS cadre posts to be filled by departmental promotees lay vacant. The problem became more acute after the Omar Abdullah government decided in June 2014 to enhance the retirement age of its employees from 58 years to 60 years. As a result, a number of KPS officers got two more years of service, making the stagnation problem more acute among the directly appointed KPS officers, who were forced to see their batchmates in the KAS and feeding services occupy ranks much higher than theirs.
