How many Agniveers can states absorb amid 600,000 police vacancies?

States quotas will help plug the gap for agniveer recruitments

Taking a cue from the Centre, which announced a 10 percent reservation for Agniveers in central armed police forces and paramilitary forces, ten states have since announced a quota for Agniveers in their respective forces.

Agniveers are recruits hired for a four-year period in the armed forces under the Agnipath scheme, which was introduced in June 2022.

Moneycontrol does a deep dive into whether states have the capacity to absorb Agniveers.

What does the data say?

The actual strength in state police departments has lagged recruitment for some time now, with the gap increasing further post Covid. The thrust on quota for Agniveer graduates may help plug that gap to some extent, as more states join.

States were staring at nearly 600,000 police vacancies as of 2022, an 11 percent increase since 2019, according to the home ministry data.

Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have earlier announced quotas for Agniveers in police forces while Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam were the latest ones to give this benefit.

A Moneycontrol analysis shows that 40 percent of India’s vacancies in state police forces came from these ten states alone.

Four of these ten states had nearly a fourth of jobs vacant in state police forces in 2022, with another four having a fifth of the jobs vacant.

Overall, the actual strength of police departments was 28 percent lower than the sanctioned strength.

Among these, West Bengal had 40 percent of jobs vacant in its police force, while Bihar had 35 percent vacancies.

Matching demand and supply

As of July, over a lakh Agniveers have been recruited by armed forces. While a quarter will be retained, the rest will have to find employment elsewhere.

If 46,000 Agniveers are enrolled per annum, 34,500 will be looking for jobs at the end of the scheme.

The back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that state police forces can absorb around 8,000 people per year, assuming a 10 percent quota announced by states.

In 2021, states had recruited 80,000 people in police departments. Central armed police forces, which have also announced a 10 percent quota, could accommodate another 1,500.

Poor performance on quotas

While Budget constraints may limit states from recruiting more personnel, India still lags the world in police deployment. The UN mandates 222 police personnel per lakh people; in contrast, India had 196 per lakh personnel.

Another factor which may need to be addressed is the insufficient utilisation of current quota systems for ex-service personnel in civilian jobs.

Data from the defence ministry shows that none of the central departments met the limits of applicable reservation in 2021.

The average quota available for central government departments and public sector banks for ex-service personnel was 12.9 percent, but they could fill only 2.5 percent of the reserved positions in 2021.