The allocation of cadre to IPS officers must adhere to the principles of equality and the insider-outsider roster as per the Cadre Allocation Policy.

JUDGMENT :

AMIT RAWAL, J.

1. Present O.P. (CAT) is directed against the judgment of the Central Administrative Tribunal dated 12.10.2023 rejecting O.A. No.139 of 2020 wherein the following reliefs were claimed:

"a. Call for the record leading to the issue of Annexure A7 and A9 and quash the same to the extent they pertain to applicant's allotment to Kerala Cadre.

b. Direct the Respondents to consider afresh applicant's claim for allotment of Home Cadre of Karnataka and to cause issue of necessary orders allotting the applicant to her Home cadre of Karnataka with all consequential benefits in the matter of seniority etc.

c. Pass any other order or direction that this Hon'ble Tribunal may deem it fit and necessary in the facts and circumstances of the present case and in the interest of justice and equity."

2. Succinctly, the facts in brief for adjudication of the controversy are enumerated herein below:

Government of India, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Department of Personnel and Training, vide Office Memorandum dated 10.04.2008, came out with a Cadre Allocation Policy for All India Services - IAS/IPS/IFS (hereinafter called 'CAP -2008'). As per the aforementioned Office Memorandum, the State Governments were required to indicate the total number of vacancies to be filled through a particular Civil Services Examination by 31^st December of every year, prior to the year of examination. In respect of services under them, the respective Cadre Controlling Authorities, namely, the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT)/Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA)/Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) shall determine the vacancies including the break-up into Unreserved (UR)/Scheduled Caste (SC)/Scheduled Tribe (ST)/Other Backward Classes (OBC)/ Insider/Outsider vacancies, for each of the cadres as per the established procedure, keeping in view, the number of districts in the State, the cadre gap in the cadre, the requisitions received from the State Government and the position of roster in the Cadre. The vacancies so determined would be communicated to the State Governments and published on the respective Ministry's website.

3. Paragraph No.2 of the aforementioned policy envisaged that a 200-point running vacancy-based- roster showing SC/ST/OBC/UR points shall be maintained for each Cadre properly and would be used for determining the vacancies of various categories (SC/ST/OBC/UR) in each Cadre. The accounting in this roster shall be done on the basis of actual filling of the roster point. This roster for each of the Cadres may be initialized by adjusting the recruitments done since the Civil Service Examination -1994.

4. The purpose of maintaining the aforesaid roster at the level of the Cadres is to ensure equitable representation to various categories and not to exactly implement the policy of reservation per se at the level of the Cadre.

5. Paragraph No.4 of the aforementioned policy had been a point of ponderance by the department in rejecting the representation, as well in bits and pieces by the Tribunal, much less agitated and relied upon by both the parties. Therefore, the same is extracted hereinbelow:

"4. The insider and outsider vacancies in a cadre shall be determined on the basis of the insider-outsider roster with points as follows: O-I-O-O-I-O and so on so as to facilitate the maintenance of the ratio of 1:2 between the insiders and the outsiders. It is, however, clarified that depending on the actual filling of the insider vacancies, the ratio between insiders and outsiders in a cadre at any point of time may, however, be less than 1: 2. There would be the following insider- outsider rosters for each cadre. first, for determining the total insiders and outsiders vacancies in the cadre; second, for determining the OBC insider/outsider vacancies and the SC/ST insider/outsider vacancies and third, for determining SC insider/outsider vacancies and ST insider/outsider vacancies. In the first step, the total Insid