The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, headed by BJP MP Sushil Kumar Modi on August 3, in its report to Union Home Ministry suggests steps to encourage women to join the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs). 

“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,” it said.

The standing committee also recommends to form reservations for the transgenders and at the same time, recruit them.

“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,” the report further said.

According to the report, the number of women recruitment in the central forces is quite low in comparison to men.

“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.

In respect to border districts, the Committee said it is paramount to recruit the maximum number of youngsters from these areas and recommended to conduct a special recruitment drive 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.

It further emphasised the filling up of all vacancies on mission mode in Central Armed Police Forces and Assam Rifles (AR).

"The Committee recommends that there has to be a robust mechanism to monitor how many people are retiring from forces, how many vacancies created and whether people have been appointed to the vacant posts, i.e. vacancies created should be filled regularly and backlogs to be avoided," it said.

(With inputs from PTI)