Civil Services Examination, 2017

The Cadre Controlling Authorities, namely, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) / Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) / Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) shall determine the vacancies including the break-up into Unreserved (UR)/ Scheduled Caste (SC) / Scheduled Tribe (ST) / Other Backward Classes (OBC)/ Insider / Outsider vacancies for each of the cadres as per the established procedure.

The States/Joint Cadres shall be divided into the following five Zones:

i. Zone-I (AGMUT, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana)
ii. Zone-II (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha)
iii. Zone-III (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh)
iv. Zone-IV (West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam-Meghalaya. Manipur, Tripura and
v. Zone-V (Telangana. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala)

The candidates shall first give their choice in the descending order of preference from amongst the various Zones. Thereafter the candidates will indicate one preference of cadre from each preferred zone. The candidates will indicate their second cadre preference for every preferred zone thereafter. Similar process will continue till a preference for all the cadres is indicated by the candidate. It is to be noted that preference for the zones will remain in the same order and no change in the order of preference for the zones/ cadres will be permitted.

If a candidate does not give any preference for any of the Zones/Cadres, it will be presumed that he has no specific preference for those Zones/cadres. Accordingly, if he is not allocated to any one of the cadres for which he has indicated the preference, he shall be allotted along with other such candidates in the order of rank to any of the remaining cadres, arranged in an alphabetical order, in which there are vacancies in his category after allocation of all the candidates who can be allotted to cadres in accordance with their preference.

However a candidate claiming benefit of reservation under Physically Disabled quota shall have an additional option to indicate his preference (at the time of indicating preferences for various Zones and Cadres thereunder) for any one state/cadre (other than Home cadre) of his first preferred zone. In case he is found eligible as a Physically disabled candidate and accordingly he has been allocated to any of the All India Service, then he shall be allocated to that cadre as per the modalities explained in para 8.

A candidate shall be allotted to his Home cadre, on the basis of his merit, preference and vacancy available at his turn in his category. For allocation to Home cadre against an Insider vacancy, a candidate will be required to express his first preference to the Zone in which his Home cadre falls as well as first preference to the Home cadre within that relevant Zone, otherwise he shall not be considered for his Home cadre at all.

The mechanism for filling up of an Insider vacancy belonging to a particular category for which a candidate is not available shall be as following:

(a) If an Unreserved candidate is not available to fill UR Insider vacancy, then it would be filled by an Insider ST candidate provided there is an ST Outsider vacancy available in that cadre to facilitate exchange. If ST Insider candidate is not available or ST Outsider vacancy is not available in that cadre, then the Unreserved vacancy would be filled by Insider SC candidate with the same condition that there must be an Outsider SC vacancy to facilitate the exchange. If SC Insider candidate is also not available or SC Outsider vacancy is also not available in that cadre, then the Unreserved vacancy would be filled by Insider OBC candidate with the same condition that there must be an Outsider OBC vacancy to facilitate the exchange.

(b) Similarly, the Insider OBC vacancy, if not filled due to non-availability of Insider OBC candidate, then it would be first filled by an Insider ST candidate and then by an Insider SC candidate and then by an Insider Unreserved candidate with the same conditions mutatis mutandis as per para 7 (a) above.

(c) The Insider SC vacancy, if not filled due to non-availability of Insider SC candidate, then it would be first filled by an Insider ST candidate and then by an Insider OBC candidate and then by an Insider Unreserved candidate with the same conditions mutatis mutandis as per para 7 (a) above.

(d)The Insider ST vacancy, if not filled due to non-availability of an Insider ST candidate, then it would be first filled by an Insider SC candidate and then by an Insider OBC candidate and then by an Insider Unreserved candidate with the same conditions mutatis mutandis as per Para 7 (a) above.

Provided that in every such case listed in clause (a), (b), (c) and (d) above, if Insider-physically-disabled-candidate(s) of the relevant community is/are available, such physically disabled candidate (senior most in the merit list) shall be so adjusted. In other words, a physically disabled candidate would have a higher claim for being adjusted as compared with non-physically disabled candidates of his community.

The cadre allocation shall consist of three steps as follows:

(i) First, all those candidates who can be allocated against the Insider vacancies available in their category would be so allocated.

(ii) Second, the candidates who are eligible for allocation to their Home cadre as per Para 7 above will be allocated first as per clause(s) of Para 7 above. Even after this exchange as per para 7 above, if an Insider vacancy cannot be filled, it would be converted to Outsider vacancy and filled as such and it would not be can-ied forward to next examination year.

(iii) Finally, the allocation against Outsider vacancies (including the Outsider vacancies, which remained eventually unfilled after the allocation as per clause (i) and (ii) of para 8 above) would commence. Allocation against Outsider vacancies to candidates in respective categories shall be done in the following manner:

(a) The first choice for the Cadre in the first preferred Zone would be considered in the order of merit.

(b) If the candidate does not get allocated to the lst preferred Cadre of his 1st preferred Zone, then he would be considered for the first preferred cadre of his 2"d preferred Zone and so on till the 1st preferred cadre of the 5th preferred Zone.

(c) If the candidate does not get allocated to the 1st preferred cadre(s) of any Zone, then he would be considered for the 2nd preferred cadre of the 1st preferred Zone and so on.

(d) However, in this process, if the cadre for which allocation is being considered is the Home cadre of the candidate, then that preference for Home Cadre in the Zone would be ignored and would be considered for next zone. Notwithstanding this, however, if during the course of allocation against the Outsider vacancies as above a candidate is going to be allocated to his own Home cadre  because there are no other vacancies left for allocation other than those in his Home cadre. an -exchan2,e' would be resorted to whereby the allocation of such candidate would be swapped with the cadre allotted to the first candidate above him in the list whose Home state and allotted cadre are different.

Provided that at the time of allocating candidates as per para 8(iii) above, a Physically Disabled candidate (who could not be allocated to his Home Cadre) shall be considered only for his preferred cadre given as an additional option mentioned in para 5 above and if an outsider vacancy is available in that cadre in his category at his turn, he shall be allocated to that cadre. In case he could not be allocated to that cadre due to non availability of vacancy, then he shall be allocated to that cadre under the Outsider quota by creating an additional vacancy in that cadre. Consequent upon the application of this provision for the Physically Disabled candidates, if any cadre(s) is not getting requisite number of officers as per the determined vacancies, then their requirement for the additional officer(s) will be duly kept in mind while distributing the vacancies among various cadres for the subsequent Civil Services Examination.

A reserved category candidate selected on general merit standards shall be eligible for allocation against the available unreserved vacancy as per his merit and preference. But if he cannot be allocated against such vacancy, for he is lower in rank as compared with other general category candidates, he shall be considered for allocation as per his merit and preference against the available vacancy of his category.

Allocation with reference to limited preference candidates shall be governed in accordance with the procedure outlined in para 4. Normally, limited preference candidates are assigned cadre in the end. However, policy also lays down allocation of such candidates in their respective category. Therefore, because of migration of general merit candidates to their own category, a situation may arise where both reserved category and general category vacancies are left unfilled. As general candidates cannot be allocated against reserved vacancies, it is mandatory to first allocate cadres to these general category limited (equal) preferences candidates.

In order to ensure that adjustment of unallocated  reserved category candidates does not result into higher ranked candidates being allocated to lower preferred cadre within a particular Zone vis-a-vis lower ranked candidates, it is stipulated that Cadre Controlling Authority (CCA) would:

(a) pool together all reserved category candidates (except general merit candidates) who have been already allocated cadre plus unallocated reserved candidates;

(b) pool together all the cadres allocated to reserved candidates against Outsider vacancies plus unutilized UR vacancies; and

(c) thereafter, all reserved category candidates will be arranged according to their rank and cadres will be allocated keeping in view the provisions as mentioned in para 8 (iii).

The Cadre allocation exercise for the IAS shall be done as early as possible and before the commencement of the Foundation Course in the LBSNAA. The Cadre allocation exercise for the IPS/IFoS shall also be done immediately after the appointments have been made.

This cadre allocation policy issues in supersession of the existing cadre allocation policy and comes into effect with the Civil Services Examination — 2017/ Indian Forest Service Examination - 2017.