The government informed Parliament on Wednesday that number of personnel opting for voluntary retirement service (VRS) in central paramilitary forces rose to around 450 per cent (or 4.5 times) in 2016-17 as compared to the previous year.
In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, minister of state for home – Kiren Rijiju cited personal and domestic reasons among others for personnel going on VRS. He, however, said that these resignations are “essentially a personal choice.”
An up-to-date data provided by the minister stated that 2016-17 saw the maximum of 9,065 personnel going for Voluntary Retirement Service (VRS) in last three years from forces like CRPF, BSF, ITBP, CISF, SSB and Assam Rifles.
While in 2014-15 a total of 5,289 personnel of these forces had taken VRS, the figure had come down to 2,105 in 2015-16.
The attrition has been plaguing the almost 10 lakh strong central paramilitary forces for a long time now. Sources in these forces said that while domestic reasons force most of the men to leave, career stagnation, lack of pay parity and tough working conditions also play an important part in such retirements.
Officials say that these retirements leave a huge gap in the vacancies in the forces, which are being used for major law and order duties on the borders, J&K, maoist affected states, elections, VIP security and other purposes.
The maximum cases of VRS in 2016-17 were reported from the Border Security Force (4,274) followed by the Central Reserve Police Force (3,280) and the Central Industrial Security Force (765).
Providing a separate data on the personnel who left these forces by way of resignation, Rijiju stated that a total of 1,187 officials left in 2016-17, 1,840 in 2015-16 and 1,989 in 2014-15.
