Indian Forest Service

The modern Indian Forest Service was established in 1966, after independence, under the All India Services Act 1951. The first Inspector General of Forests, Hari Singh, was instrumental in the development of the Forest Service.

India has an area of 635,400 km² designated as forests, about 19.32% of the country. India's forest policy was created in 1894 and revised in 1952 and again in the year 1988.

On acceptance to the Forest Service, new entrants undergo a probationary period (and are referred to as Officer Trainees). Training begins at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, where members of many civil services are trained for the period of 15 weeks.

On completion of which they go to the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy at Dehradun, for a more intensive training in a host of subjects important to Forestry, Wildlife Management, Biodiversity, Environment Protection, Climate Change, Forest Policies and Laws, Remote Sensing and GIS, Forest Dwellers and Scheduled Tribes.[11][12] After completion of their training, the officers are awarded a master's degree in Science (Forestry) of Forest Research Institute.[11][12] The officers are taught more than 56 subjects of life sciences in these two years.[11][12]

They are also taught Weapon handling, Horse riding, Motor Vehicle Training, Swimming, Forest and Wildlife Crime Detection. They also go on attachments with different government bodies and institutes such as Indian Military Academy, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Wildlife Institute of India, Bombay Natural History Society etc. They also undertake extensive tours both in India and a short tour abroad.

Forest Research Institute in Dehradun

After completing training at the academy, candidates go through a year of on-the-job field training in the state to which he or she is assigned, during which they are posted as Assistant Conservators of Forests/ Assistant Deputy Conservators of Forest or Deputy Conservator of Forests.

The Union Government announced a new cadre allocation policy for the All India Services in August 2017.[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]

Under the new policy, a candidate has to rank the five zones in order of preference.[19] Subsequently, the candidate has to indicate one preference of cadre from each preferred zone.[19] The candidate indicates their second cadre preference for every preferred zone subsequently. The process continues till a preference for all the cadres is indicated by the candidate.[19]

Officers continue to work in the cadre they are allotted or are deputed to the Government of India.[20]

Till 2008 there was no system of preference of state cadre by the candidates; the candidates, if not placed in the insider vacancy of their home states, were allotted to different states in alphabetic order of the roster, beginning with the letters A, H, M, T for that particular year. For example, if in a particular year the roster begins from 'A', which means the first candidate on the roster will go to the Andhra Pradesh state cadre of the Forest Service, the next one to Bihar, and subsequently to Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, and so on in alphabetical order.[21] The next year the roster starts from 'H', for either Haryana or Himachal Pradesh (if it has started from Haryana on the previous occasion when it all started from 'H', then this time it would start from Himachal Pradesh). This highly intricate system, in vogue since the mid-1980s, had ensured that officers from different states are placed all over India.

The system of permanent State cadres has also resulted in wide disparities in the kind of professional exposure for officers, when we compare officers in small and big and also developed and backward states.[21] Changes of state cadre was permitted on grounds of marriage to an All India Service officer of another state cadre or under other exceptional circumstances. The officer may go to their home state cadre on deputation for a limited period, after which one has to invariably return to the cadre allotted to him or her.[22]

From 2008 to 2017 Forest Service officers were allotted to State cadres at the beginning of their service. There was one cadre for each Indian state, except for two joint cadres: Assam–Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh–Goa–Mizoram–Union Territories (AGMUT).[22] The "insider-outsider ratio" (ratio of officers who were posted in their home states) is maintained as 1:2, with one-third of the direct recruits as 'insiders' from the same state.[23] The rest were posted as outsiders according to the 'roster' in states other than their home states,[23] as per their preference.

As per media reports, some Forest Service officers have been found corrupt[25][26][27] and have been arrested by Central Bureau of Investigation for bribing and corruption.[28][29][30] In 2015, Tehelka reported that more than 30 names of Forest Service officers who might have been awarded dubious or suspect Ph.D. degrees.[31][32][33]

The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes has proposed the idea of renaming the Indian Forest Service as the ‘Indian Forest and Tribal Service’.[34][35]

• Cyril Beeson
• Dietrich Brandis
• Frederick Walter Champion
• Hugh Cleghorn
• Peter Clutterbuck
• James Sykes Gamble
• Edgar Peacock
• Wilhelm Philipp Daniel Schlich
• Bertram Smythies
• E. A. Smythies
• Robert Scott Troup
• E.C.Mobbs

Jal Ardeshir Master ( Chief Conservator of Forests Madras Presidency )

• Hari Singh
• P. Srinivas
• Dr. Muthoo
• Sanjiv Chaturvedi
• Hemendra Singh Panwar
• Fateh Singh Rathore