A Parliamentary panel has recommended that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) extend some form of reservation to transgender people in the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) and take steps to recruit them.
The Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, which presented its report on August 3 to Rajya Sabha, also batted for recruitment of women. Chaired by BJP MP Sushil Kumar Modi, it said: “The Committee advocates that all necessary steps should be taken by MHA to encourage women to join Forces to the maximum possible extent. A major constraint that prevents women from joining forces is the difficult terrains and conditions in which they might have to work. So, a policy may be explored for women officers being given soft postings and not subjecting them to extremely strenuous and difficult working conditions, unless required in extreme circumstances like war, armed rebellion etc and that too when there is absolute shortage of males who can be deployed by the forces.”
“The Committee also recommends that some sort of reservation may also be given to transgenders. Steps may be taken to recruit transgenders as well so that they can be integrated well with mainstream society in near future,” it said.
There were 34,278 women personnel posted in the CAPFs as on September 30, 2022. Of these, 1,894 were in Assam Rifles, 7,470 in the Border Security Force, 9,316 in the Central Industrial Security Force, 9,427 in the Central Reserve Police Force, 2,514 in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and 3,657 in the Sashastra Seema Bal.
“The Committee wishes to point out another imperative issue that is the percentage of women in Central Forces. Only 3.65 per cent of vacancies for women have been filled till now. In BSF and SSB, it is only 14 per cent to 15 per cent, in CISF it is 6.35 per cent and in ITBP it is 2.83 per cent. So there are certain constraints which are preventing women from joining the forces. The representation of women personnel in CAPFs & AR is 3.76% as on September 30, 2022,” the report said.
“There is no specific reservation for women in CAPFs. However, in order to enhance the representation of women in CAPFs, in 2011, based on the recommendations of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Empowerment of Women, directions were issued to bring percentage of women in the forces to 5% within 3 year,” the report read.
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Advertisement“To prevent disaffection amongst these Agniveers, which comprises of youth of this country, Committee suggests that the remaining Agniveers may be given reservation/ preference in other Government jobs so that trained persons and the skills acquired by them during the service in Forces can be utilised to the maximum extent possible. Some jobs where it is practical to provide preference to them are Police Forces, Parliament Security Service and any other Combat Force,” the report said.
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“The Committee also recommends that with respect to border districts, it is paramount to recruit maximum youngsters from these areas. Special recruitment drives may be conducted for recruitment of local youngsters from states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, North Eastern states and Kashmir. It should be ensured that the 25% of reservation for areas affected by militancy/LWE and 25% vacancies of border guarding forces allotted to border districts is fulfilled immediately so that the energy and talent of youth of these areas are channelized and they do not deviate toward extremism and terrorism,” the report said.
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