Shortage of Officers in the Indian Army: Defence minister tells Rajya Sabha

He said that shortage of officers is inter alia attributable to accretions of posts from time to time, tough selection procedures, difficult service conditions coupled with perceived high degree of risk involved in the service career as also inherent limitation of number that could be trained without compromising the quality of training.

The minister, in his reply said, a number of measures have been taken from time to time to reduce the shortage of officers in the Army, including making Short Service Commission more attractive, introduction of Colonel (Time Scale) rank, enhancing promotional avenues by way of upgradation of posts in select ranks, additional family accommodation through Married Accommodation Project.

He also said that the Army has undertaken sustained image projection campaign to create awareness among the youth on the advantages of taking up a challenging and satisfying career. Awareness campaigns, participation in career fairs and exhibitions, advertisements in print and electronic media, motivational lectures in schools, colleges are some of the measures in this direction.

All the above mentioned measures have resulted in progressive improvement with shortage of officers reducing from around 26 per cent in 2010 to approximately 18 per cent in 2015, in spite of accretion of about 1800 posts during this period, said the defence minister.