NEW DELHI: With over 83,000 vacancies, India's Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) are facing a shortage of manpower, according to the government.
The forces in which the posts are lying vacant are Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and Assam Rifles.
MoS Home Affairs Nityanand Rai on Wednesday informed the parliament that as many as 83,217 posts in the CAPF were vacant as of Jan. 1, 2023, against a total sanctioned strength of 10,15,237. The shortage of manpower since 2019 stands at 8 per cent of the total sanctioned strength. With 29,283 vacancies, the CRPF suffered from the highest shortage of personnel.
Rai said the government has been taking measures to fill the vacancies, adding, "The recruitment is being undertaken in mission mode to fill these vacancies and it is planned to be completed in 2023.”
"It may also be mentioned that 32,181 personnel have been recruited between July 2022 to January 2023. Further, 64,444 vacancies have been notified and are at different stages of recruitment,” he added.
Sources within the CAPFs said that the peculiarity of the service conditions requires maintaining a minimum force level every time and that the scarcity of personnel affects the Units the most.
"Keeping the service conditions and deployments we cannot let the number of personnel present in a Unit come down from a minimum number. And, the duties of those not in the Unit have to be perforce carried out by those in the Unit and this leads to additional work to every person," a source informed TNIE.
Meanwhile, the number of women personnel in the CAPFs and the ARs has been consistently increasing during the same period. In 2019, as many as 27,047 (2.9 per cent) of 9.12 lakh personnel in service were women. The number has now risen to 3.82 per cent, with at least 35,074 women in service from a total of 9.16 lakh personnel.
The CAPFs function under the administrative control of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Of the CAPFs, AR, BSF, ITBP and SSB help guard the country's border, while, the CRPF is deployed for internal security duties, maintenance of law and order and anti-militancy operations in Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast.