19% of IAS posts vacant, flags House panel

NEw new delhi: The rural area faces nearly 19% shortage of native american Administrative serve (IAS) officers, with at to the lowest degree 1,300 of the 6,877 sanctioned positions remaining vacant, a parliamentary panel said on Monday, warning that the shortage might adversely affect administrative capacity at the Centre and in states.The parliamentary standing committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice — headed by BJP MP Brij Lal — urged the department of personnel and training (DoPT) to immediately fill vacancies in cadres such as AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and Union Territories), which has over 25% vacancies, and in states like Nagaland, where the shortage is 43.62%.The panel’s 160th report on Demands for Grants (2026-27) pertaining to DoPT, tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Monday, points to over 30% shortage of IAS officers of different ranks in states like Kerala (32.03%), Manipur (30.43%) and Nagaland (43.62%). The AGMUT cadre, which has officers across different states and UTs, has a shortage of 25.09%.Noting that the shortage affects administrative capacity especially at field-level positions where timely decision-making and policy implementation are critical, the panel said a special strategy is needed for the northeastern states and smaller cadres where the shortage is disproportionately high.“The Committee, therefore, urges the DoPT to immediately prioritise filling the 25% vacancies in the AGMUT cadre, considering its unique administrative spread across multiple Union Territories and the National Capital Territory. Moreover, the Committee feels that there is a need to formulate a special filling strategy for North-Eastern and smaller cadres such as Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim, where percentage shortages are disproportionately high,” it said.Additionally, the panel in another part of the report recommended that the government develop a comprehensive framework to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) in public administration. The panel stressed the need for strong safeguards to protect sensitive government data and ensure human officials retain final decision-making authority. In addition to regulatory safeguards, the committee highlighted the need to improve AI literacy within government. It recommended expanding training programmes on responsible AI use across all levels of the bureaucracy, especially for dealing hands and lower-level staff who routinely process official data.