Major concerns and Reforms[edit]

See also: Devyani Khobragade incident

In 2010, a diplomat officer was found spying for an intelligence agency of another country and was
later jailed for three years.[13][14][15][16] In 2012, media reports showed that a foreign service officer was
fined US$1.5 million[17][18] for engaging in slavery [17] by United States District Court for the Southern
District of New York[17] and was also found denying visa on the basis of homosexuality.[19][20]
Shashi Tharoor, currently the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External
Affairs,[21][22] has presented 12th report[23] for expanding and building the numbers, quality and
capacity of India's diplomats.[24][25] It has been reported that India's diplomatic corps is increasingly
outclassed, outnumbered and out of date.[26] India has one of the most understaffed diplomatic force
of any major country in the world.[27][28][29][30]

Corruption[edit]
Several media reports have reported foreign service officers under investigation for
corruption.[31][32][33][34][35]

Foreign Service cadre discrimination[edit]

There is in total a pool of 2,700 personnel holding diplomatic rank that serve in overseas missions
and at headquarters. Of these only a minority of about 770 are IFS officers, the senior cadre of
Indian diplomacy, which is primarily drawn from recruitment through the Civil Services Examination.
The breakdown of other cadres and personnel include 252 Grade-I officers of the IFS(B), 33 of the
Interpreters Cadre, 24 of the Legal and Treaties Cadre, 635 Attaches, 540 diplomatic officers from
the secretarial staff and 310 diplomatic officers from other Ministries.External Affairs | Test
(Assessment) | Public Administration
IFS (B) is the subordinate cadre which ranks below the IFS (A) and has two sub-cadres, the IFS (B)
General Cadre (recruited as Clerks and Assistants (now Assistant Section Officers)) and
Stenographers Cadre (recruited as Stenographers and Personal Assistants) through separate
entrance exams conducted by the Staff Selection Commission. The General Cadre, after promotion
to Grade-I of the IFS (B), are absorbed into the IFS A service, while the Stenographers Cadre was
denied this benefit vide a ruling in 2004 banning the lateral entry into IFS (A) upon promotion as
Principal Private Secretaries (equivalent to Under Secretary in the IFS (B) General Cadre).[36] The
Stenographers Cadre provides secretarial support to the IFS Officers, while the IFS (B) General
Cadre provides clerical support by manning the Sections and handling the files.[37]
The relations between the cadres have been marked by territorial grievance and rivalry, becoming at
times heated enough to spill into the public sphere.[36] A common grievance among IFS (A) officers is
the practice of antedating the appointment of IFS (B) officers 8 years before the date of their actual
promotion.[36] This puts the IFS (B) officers, who are seen as less prestigious, ahead for promotions
of IFS (A) officers who directly entered the service before them.[36] In 2013, 6 IFS (A) officers went as
far as to lodge a complaint, against their foreign secretary as well as eight IFS (B) officers named as
respondents, with the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) for clogging the promotion pipeline and
leading to "de-motivation and demoralisation among direct recruit officers".[36]
IFS (B) officers have also complained of discrimination against them by IFS (A) officers. A Facebook
group purportedly voicing the objections of IFS (B) officers sprung up in 2016 when IFS (B) officer
Tajinder Singh, Second Secretary in the Indian embassy in Lisbon died of an apparent
suicide.[38] The Facebook group alleged that Singh was treated unfairly because he was forced to
yield his choice assignment in Washington DC after serving in a hardship posting in Damascus.[38] He
was forced to give up his choice assignment for Lisbon because of alleged "discrimination and
professional challenges from IFS (A) officers in the ministry".[38]
IFS (B) General Cadre have an acrimonious rivalry with the IFS (B) Stenographers Cadre, who are
perceived to be lower in prestige than the IFS (B) officers but have a closer working relationship with
IFS (A) officers, giving the stenographers at times promotion opportunities ahead of IFS (B) officers.
This rivalry was brought to the fore when an officer of the stenographer cadre was appointed as
Indian Ambassador to North Korea in 2012. Within a week of the appointment IFS (B) officers
vociferously protested. Three different associations representing IFS (B) officers came together to
write a single complaint to the Prime Minister’s Office and the external affairs minister expressing
their “utter disappointment” and requesting a review of the appointment. In this fight, the overall loss
is for the Government of India since it fails to utilise services of the vast resource of experienced
officers of the Stenographers Cadre, who by virtue of their attachments with senior officers, are
better equipped of the soft policies of the Government in addition to the rules & regulations,
compared to the General Cadre, who are mainly deployed in Sections and are limited to clerical
work and maintaining files, till their promotion as Grade I. It has been a demand of the
Stenographers Cadre that the Government should introduce merit-based scheme or a common
exam for the subordinate cadres (Clerks as well as Stenographers) to select the best and the
brightest officers for inclusion into the IFS (A) and filter out the incapable ones.[37]

Notable IFS Officers[edit]

 Vijayalakshmi Pandit
 K.P.S. Menon
 Shivshankar Menon
 Nirupama Rao
 Vijay Keshav Gokhale
 Harsh Vardhan Shringla
 Subimal Dutt
 Kanwal Sibal
 C. B. Muthamma
 Shyam Saran
 Sardar K. M. Panikkar
 Triloki Nath Kaul
 Brajesh Mishra
 K. R. Narayanan
 Devyani Khobragade
 J N Dixit
 K. Natwar Singh
 Mani Shankar Aiyar
 Gopalaswami Parthasarathy
 Mohammad Hamid Ansari
 Hardeep Singh Puri
 Sujatha Singh
 S Jaishankar
 Syed Akbaruddin
 Vikas Swarup
 Arundhati Ghose
 Meira Kumar
 Salman Haider
 Shashank
 Syed Akbaruddin