157 CAPF personnel getting salaries though their deputation period had ended.
New Delhi: The directors of some of the police forces that comprise the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have been asked to explain how 157 personnel from their respective organisations overstayed their deputations in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The five forces are the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Border Security Force (BSF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF).
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), in a communication dated 24 May, which was also sent to the CBI, questioned the lackadaisical approach of the investigating agency in the matter. It asked the agency to respond to the “locus standi” behind the agency not relieving the 157 CAPF officers despite their tenures of deputation coming to an end.
Raising further questions on the way things were being handled by these forces and the CBI, the MHA asked them to respond how the salaries of these 157 personnel were being paid when their deputation period had ended.
Sources said that the directors of all the five CAPFs turned a blind eye to the fact that personnel from their organisations had over-extended their stay with the CBI. As a result, the MHA asked the CAPF chiefs about nature of action the respective CAPFs took in the present case and that it was clear that no action was taken by the CAPFs.
The communication sent to the CBI and the CAPFs does not mention the ranks of the 157 officers. However, sources said that all of them belonged to the constabulary rank.
Sources said that the Central Armed Police Forces personnel belonging to multiple ranks, right from the lower to the senior levels were attached to the agency for a fixed period of time, after which they should have been sent back to their parent organisations, which did not happen in the present case.
In many cases, CBI sources claimed, lower level personnel were employed at the residences of top agency officers and in the residences of recently retired senior officers to carry out domestic chores. The designation they were given was “security aide”.
“It is an informal system where the incoming new director of the agency, to help and oblige the outgoing senior officers, deputes some of the agency staff from the CAPF, at their homes. This is nothing but a remnant of the old colonial mindset. The agency often says that it has a shortage of staff but a third party independent audit will reveal how the staff is misused by the agency,” an MHA source said.
As per the CBI’s recruitment rules, the agency is required to fill 20% of the vacancies of Additional SPs and 50% of Deputy SPs and Inspectors in its ranks by way of deputation from other police forces.
A deputation in the agency is considered lucrative as the officer who comes on deputation joins the agency at a rank higher than what they were working in the parent cadre. The higher ranks of SPs and above in the CBI are mostly filled with Indian Police Service officers.