New Delhi: At a time when the country is grappling with escalating challenges on the internal security front, the home ministry has come up with a plan to meet the acute shortage of the Indian Police Service (IPS) officers by holding a 'restricted' competitive examination to hire these national caretakers.

A similar step was ensured after the nation lost many of them after independence as they required to fill in the posts left vacant after the War years and because of the departure of British cops to UK and Muslim cops to Pakistan.

Only existing government servants, mainly from armed services, paramilitary and state police forces stand eligible to give the exam, which will be held to recruit approximately 650 IPS officers.

U K Bansal, a special secretary in the internal security department of the home ministry confirmed the move and said that, "The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) would be responsible to conduct the examination which however, would not affect the annual recruitment process during the Civil Services Examination (CSE)."

Although there are 196 posts lying vacant but according to the estimated needs of the government, it will need 450 additional officers to tackle threats from the terrorists, Left extremists as well as criminal syndicates who have proliferated across the country due to lack of adequate police personnel.

An examination to induct the IPS officers apart from the CSE examination was mainly created during 1999-2002 by the home ministry to fulfill the lack.

During that period, the recruitment of the officers per year dropped to 36 as against the annual average of 85, which mainly led to the shortfall of 196 officers.

The government has although recently accepted the home ministry's proposal to increase the intake of the IPS officers through the CSE from 130 to 150 while the UPSC has increased the number of seats to be filled this year but the ministry’s verdict says that at the rate of 20 more recruits per year the shortfall will take several years more to decline.

Already holding the discussions over the recommendation of the one-man committee headed by retired IPS officer Kamal Kumar on Recruitment Plan (2009-2020) the ministry has so far focussed on the eligibility criteria - age and educational/special qualification - for government servants who would be allowed to take the limited competitive examination.