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Parliament Panel Proposes Steps For Women to Join CAPFs
Highlighting the poor representation of women in the CAPF (Central Armed Police Forces), a parliament panel recommended that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) take necessary steps in extending reservations for transgender people and encourage women to join the services. The latest report on this states that a new policy would be explored for women officers to be provided with soft postings in CAPF and avoid them giving or exposing them to extremely strenuous work.
BJP MP Sushil Kumar Modi who headed the Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee, Law & Justice, and Public Grievances, said that there is 3.76% of women personnel representation in Assam Rifles & Central Armed Police Officers as of September 30, 2022. “The Committee advocates that all necessary steps should be taken by MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) 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,” it is said in the 131st Report on the Review of Functioning of Recruitment Organisations of the Government of India.
This in turn gave out a suggestion that there is a high possibility of exploring a policy where in which women officers do not have to be exposed to strenuous & difficult work and be given a soft post unless they are needed in dire situations like war or an armed rebellion, even that too when there is an absolute shortage of male officers who can be deployed by the forces, the report further added.
“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 the near future,” the report continued.
Coming to the imperative issue regarding the low percentage of women present in the central armed forces, the parliament said that “As on today, only 3.65% of vacancies for women have been filled till now.” In the SSB (Sahastra Seema Bal) and BSF (Border Security Force), the representation of women is just 14% to 15%. In ITBP (Indo-Tibetian Border Police) there is only 2.38% of Women personnel and in CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) it is 6.35%, the report said.
There were a total of 34,278 women personnel in CPAF. Among these, 1,894 are in Assam Rifles, 9,316 in CISF, 7,470 in BSF, 2,514 in ITBP, 9,427 in CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force), and 3,657 in SSB.
As of January 2023, it has been seen that there were 83,127 vacancies in the CAPFs and AR. In that,19,987 vacancies existed in BSF, 1,666 in AR, 19,475 in CISF, 29,283 in CRPF, 4,443 in ITBP, and 8,273 in SSB.
The report even said, “However, in order to enhance the representation of women in CAPFs, in 2011, based on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Empowerment of Women, directions were issued to bring the percentage of women in the forces to 5 percent within 3 years. It should be ensured that the 25 percent of reservation for areas affected by militancy/LWE (left-wing extremism) and 25 percent vacancies of border guarding forces allotted to border districts are fulfilled immediately so that the energy and talent of the youth of these areas are channelized and they do not deviate toward extremism and terrorism.”
The panel also stated filling up all vacancies on mission mode in AR (Assam Rifles) and a robust mechanism should be deployed to monitor how many people retired, how many vacancies were created, and whether the people have been appointed to the vacant posts in the forces regularly without maintaining a backlog.
