The Delhi high court has directed the Centre to carry out the cadre review exercise in the BSF as laxity on the part of the government has "resulted in acute stagnation in promotions" and "frustration" among officers in the force "which is not good for the security of the country".
While noting that "lack of cadre review in 25 years has resulted in no post creation at command levels (Commandant to Additional Director General level)," the court directed that the cadre review exercise should be completed within the next six months.
Further, it called for lowering the age profile at the level of Commandant as the data would evince that currently, the officers in BSF are picking up the rank of Commandant in the age bracket of 47 to 52 years and the average age of picking up Command is 48 years.
"Younger age profile is the need of the hour, especially in a combatised force with main role of combat, operations, security, border guarding etc. If the age profile at the level of Commandant is not lowered the combat abilities of the force would be weakened and this would be detrimental to the security of the nation," a bench comprising justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Pratibha Rani said.
The bench also expressed concern over the incidents of suicidal and fratricidal deaths since 2010 saying it "indicates that there is a problem of proper administrative, logistic and behavioral support mechanism".
{{/usCountry}}The bench also expressed concern over the incidents of suicidal and fratricidal deaths since 2010 saying it "indicates that there is a problem of proper administrative, logistic and behavioral support mechanism".
{{/usCountry}}The judgment was delivered on the petitions filed by officers of BSF in Group A service and in the ministerial cadre.
The commonality in the two petitions was the desire for a cadre review to be carried out of their respective cadre by highlighting a rather unfortunate state of affairs on account of laxity of the government in not holding cadre review for 25 years for BSF.