The All India Services Act, 1951 (

IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...

: ) is an Indian legislation. The Act established two

All India Services The All India Services (AIS) comprises the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service. A unique feature of the All India Services is that the members of these services are recruited by the centre (Union gover ...

and provides for the creation of three more.

History

During the occupation of India by the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Sou ...

, the civil services were divided into three — covenanted, uncovenanted and special civil services. The covenanted civil service, or the Honourable East India Company's Civil Service (HEICCS), as it was called, largely consisted of British civil servants occupying the senior posts in the government. The uncovenanted civil service was solely introduced to facilitate the entry of Indians into the lower rung of the administration. The special service consisted of specialised departments, such as the Indian Forest Service, Indian Police and

Indian Political Service The Indian Political Department (IPD), formerly known as the Foreign and Political Department of the Government of India, was a government department in British India. It originated in a resolution passed on 13 September 1783 by the board of direc ...

, whose ranks were drawn from either the covenanted civil services or the

British Indian Army The British Indian Army, commonly referred to as the Indian Army, was the main military of the British Raj before its dissolution in 1947. It was responsible for the defence of the British Indian Empire, including the princely states, which cou ...

. The Indian Police ranked many British Indian Army officers among its members, although after 1893, an annual exam was used to select its officers. In 1858, the HEICCS was replaced by the

Indian Civil Service The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 300 million p ...

(ICS), which became the highest

civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

in British-ruled India between 1858 and 1947. The last British appointments to the ICS were made in 1942. With the passing of the ''

Government of India Act, 1919 The Government of India Act 1919 (9 & 10 Geo. 5 c. 101) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was passed to expand participation of Indians in the government of India. The Act embodied the reforms recommended in the report of ...

'', the Imperial Services — under the oversight of the

Secretary of State for India His (or Her) Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for India, known for short as the India Secretary or the Indian Secretary, was the British Cabinet minister and the political head of the India Office responsible for the governance of th ...

— were split into two arms, the

and the Central Services. The Imperial Civil Service was one of the ten All India Services. In 1946, at the Premier's Conference, the then-Central Cabinet decided to form the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), based on the

Imperial Civil Service The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 300 million p ...

(ICS); and the

Indian Police Service The Indian Police Service ( IPS) is a civil service under the All India Services. It replaced the Indian Imperial Police in 1948, a year after India became independent from the British Raj. Along with the Indian Administrative Service ( ...

(IPS), based on the

Imperial Police The Indian Imperial Police, referred to variously as the Imperial Police or simply the Indian Police or, by 1905, Imperial Police, was part of the Indian Police Services, the uniform system of police administration in British Raj, as established by ...

(IP).When India was partitioned following the departure of the British in 1947, the

was divided between the new

dominion The term ''Dominion'' is used to refer to one of several self-governing nations of the British Empire. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State at the 1926 ...

s of

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

and

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

. The Indian remnant of the ICS was named the

Indian Administrative Service The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the Public administration, administrative arm of the All India Services of Government of India. Considered the premier civil service of India, the IAS is one of the three arms of the All India Services ...

, while the

remnant was named the

Pakistan Administrative Service The Pakistan Administrative Service, or PAS ( ur, ) (previously known as the District Management Group or DMG before 1 June 2012) is an elite cadre of the Civil Services of Pakistan. The Pakistan Administrative Service over the years has emerge ...

(PAS). The modern

and

were created under the Article 312(2) in part XIV of the

Constitution of India The Constitution of India ( IAST: ) is the supreme law of India. The document lays down the framework that demarcates fundamental political code, structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions and sets out fundamental ...

, and the ''All India Services Act, 1951''.

Provisions

The Act creates two All India Services as per the article 312(2) in part XIV of the

, namely, the

(IAS) and the

(IPS). The act — subject to a two-thirds majority (

supermajority A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority ru ...

) in the

Rajya Sabha The Rajya Sabha, constitutionally the Council of States, is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of India. , it has a maximum membership of 245, of which 233 are elected by the legislatures of the states and union territories using si ...

— also provides for the creation of three more

, namely, the Indian Engineering Service, the

Indian Forest Service The Indian Forest Service (IFS) is one of the three All India Services of the Government of India. The other two All India Services being the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service. It was constituted in the year 1966 und ...

, and the

Indian Medical Service The Indian Medical Service (IMS) was a military medical service in British India, which also had some civilian functions. It served during the two World Wars, and remained in existence until the independence of India in 1947. Many of its officer ...

. Of these, only the

was created under the ''All India Services Act, 1951'' in 1966.

Amendments

The ''All India Services Act, 1951'' has been amended four times.

References

Bibliography

Books

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Paper

* {{Refend All India Services 1951 in India Nehru administration Acts of the Parliament of India 1951