New Delhi, Sep 30 (IANS): The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on Thursday held a 'Cadre Review' meeting for the promotion of officers from 'Group A' service, sources in the security establishment said.
The meeting was aimed to give promotions to its field commanders like 'Assistant Commandants', Deputy Commandants and Second-in-Command.
The cadre review meeting takes place after every five years.
Earlier, the committee was headed by its previous Special DG Sanjay Arora. He was replaced by Additional Director General Nitin Agrawal. Arora has been transferred as ITBP DG while IGs Ajay Yadav and Vivek Vaidya, DIG BK Sharma and representatives from other ranks are members of the committee.
The sources also said that suggestions have been taken from many units of the force regarding cadre review and these were discussed in the meeting.
Admitting that the process has been exhausting as the reports will be sent to the Union Home Ministry first and then would be sent to the Finance Ministry for approval. After that they will be routed to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and then be put up for Cabinet approval via MHA.
The cadre controlling authority of the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF), the Union Home Ministry was supposed to send a composite report for all CAPF group A level officers latest by the June 30 this year to DoPT but it was delayed.
These officers from group A service actually handle the ground situations in dealing with terrorists, naxals, natural calamities but they lagged behind in terms of promotions unlike other officers from the all India services.
"It has become very difficult to get promotion to these three posts, 'Assistant Commandant, Deputy Commandant and Second in Command' and approximately it takes 10-12 years for Assistant Commandant to get his first promotion and this way he will take at least 25 years to reach to the Commanding Officer (CO) level," officials said on condition of anonymity.
The Union Cabinet had approved the final proposal for Cadre Review on June 29, 2016. The Delhi High Court in its order in April 2021, had also ordered that cadre review proceedings in the CRPF should be completed by June 30.
Referring to the delay, officials in the force on condition of anonymity said that 2004 batch Deputy Commandant ranked officers were yet to get the post of 'Second in Command' even after 17 years while 1999 batch cadre officers have been waiting to become Commandant after 22 years.
The government has already given the benefits of Non-Functional Financial Upgradation (NFFU) and Non-Functional Selection Grade (NFSG) to all officers of the CAPF in July 2019.