21.7% posts vacant, PM wants 10L to get govt jobs in 18 mths
NewDelhi, June 14: Amid mounting joblessness and tardy recruitment drives, PM Narendra Modi today ordered government departments to employ 10 lakh persons over 18 months in mission mode. The PMO said Modi undertook a review of the status of human resources across departments and ministries and ordered for recruitment of 10 lakh persons in mission mode over the next 1.5 years. The drive aims to counter Opposition’s charges over record unemployment ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The development comes amid rising vacancies across government departments with 21.7 per cent of all sanctioned central government posts lying vacant (as of March 1, 2020), as per the latest official data available. In all, there are 40,04,491 sanctioned posts of Central Government regular civilian employees and only 31,32,698 of these are filled. Cumulative vacancies at the Central Government level come to 21.7%, which means one in every five sanctioned posts is vacant. The highest backlog of unfilled posts with over 37% vacancies or more is in key departments like revenue, agricultural research and education; agriculture and farmers’ welfare; civil aviation; defence (civil) and posts. Out of 54 posts in agricultural research, 32 are filled with 40.7% vacancies. Agricultural research and farmer welfare has 5,791 sanctioned posts of which 2,712 are vacant (37.5 per cent). In defence (civil), out of 6,33,139 sanctioned posts, 2,47,499 (39%) are vacant. Out of 15.07 lakh posts in the Railways, 2.37 lakh remain vacant. Key ministries of external affairs and personnel are also reeling under staff shortage. Out of 11,035 MEA posts, 2,204 (19.9%) are vacant. In the personnel department, 2,375 (21.3%) posts out of sanctioned 11,124 are vacant. Even the PMO (as of March 2020) had 26.2 per cent vacancies, with 117 out of 446 sanctioned posts unfilled. The situation in the President’s Secretariat was no better with 91 unfilled posts (23.9%) among 380 sanctioned. The Vice-President’s Secretariat was a little better with a 17.7 per cent vacancies (11 vacant posts out of 62). The Home Ministry has 11.8 per cent vacancies with 1,28,842 posts vacant out of sanctioned 10,84,430 posts. Data accessed by The Tribune also shows a consistently slow pace of recruitment over the past five years. Top recruiting agencies of the Central Government (UPSC, Staff Selection Commission and Railway Recruitment Boards) together recruited only 78,264 persons in 2020-21; 1.48 lakh in 2019-2020, 38,827 in 2018-19; 77,192 in 2017-18; and 1.02 lakh in 2016-17. The PM’s direction seeks to intensify recruitments as departmental efficiency is suffering due to staff crunch.
