SC Asks Centre To Accommodate 20 Trainee IAS And IPS Officers Affected By ‘Extremely Vague’ Cadre Allocation Policy

A vacation bench of the Supreme Court comprising of Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Sanjiv Supreme Court has passed an order directing authorities to accommodate 20 aggrieved trainee IAS and IPS officers by adding one additional post in the respective state cadres preferred by them, reports Live Law.

The said trainee officers had challenged the way that the Centre had interpreted the Cadre Allocation Policy 2017, claiming that the process had been carried out in an unreasonable and grossly unfair manner.

The Office Memorandum which was issued laying out how preferences were to be filled labelled ‘extremely vague’ by the bench.

"Your circular should have been more clear and if required, you should have given examples also," the bench told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.

As per the policy, the selected candidates were first required to mark their preferred zones in descending order, and then mention their preferred cadre within each zone, going on to give a second preference for each preferred zones as well. If a candidate had no preference for zones/cadres, then he or she would have to fill in 99.

The affected trainees had first approached the Delhi High Court which had quashed the entire allocation of IAS and IPS offices for the 2018 batch, but this was challenged by the Centre before the Supreme Court. The apex court has now decided to agree to this solution to just make sure that the affected candidates are given a remedy.