History of Civil Services in Pakistan

The civil Bureaucracy is a colonial legacy in this part of the world. The British used to rule the native
population through Indian Civil Service (ICS) and most of the officers in ICS were British themselves. It
was in the early 20th Century that the Indians also started competing against the British and many Indians
eventually made it to the ICS. With the partition of Indiain 1947, the term 'Central Superior Services' was
used in Pakistan and the concept of All-Pakistan Services continued. The latter consisted of the Civil
Service of Pakistan and the Police Service of Pakistan, whereas the Central Services included the
Pakistan Foreign Service and a broad category of Finance and other services. The Finance category
included the Pakistan Audit and Accounts Service, Pakistan Railway Accounts Service,Pakistan Military
Accounts Service, Pakistan Taxation Service, and the Pakistan Customs and Excise Service. The Central
Services other than these included the Pakistan Postal Service,Pakistan Military Land and Cantonment
Service, Central Secretariat Service, and Central Information Service. Each of these services had its own
cadre and composition rules, specifying the total cadre strength in terms of its number of positions.

With the Civil Services Reforms of 1973 a new system of Common Training Program or CTP was
introduced and all of these occupational groups (12 at that time) were required to go through a mandatory
combined training at Civil Services Academy (CSA), Lahore. The batch of officers who attended CSA in
1973 is recognized as “1st Common”. Up till 5th Common the allocation of occupational groups was done
after the culmination of Common Training Program but from 6th Common onwards this task has also
been assumed by FPSC. Even till this day it is an official procedure that once the Probationary Officers
successfully complete their CTP then they undergo some further Specialized Training Program (STP) in
their own professional academies.

Armed Forces and Civil Services of Pakistan

Commissioned officers of Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force, and Pakistan Navy have their own quota of
10% in all service groups of the Central Superior Services but historically they have only joined District
Management Group (DMG), Foreign Service of Pakistan (FSP), and Police Service of Pakistan (PSP).
Usually officers of Captain Rank are short listed by General Head Quarters (GHQ) and selected against
this quota after the permission directly by Chief of Army Staff before interview process.this was the major
force in the history of Pakistan.
Reform of Civil Services
Despite the fact that Civil Services of Pakistan have been still running on the pattern set out by British
Raj (no major change has been performed), the Musharraf government started a major reform process of
it. The task was to be performed by National Commission of Government Reforms (NCGR) under the
chairmanship of Dr. Ishrat Hussain, the former governor ofState Bank of Pakistan. The final report that
was published in September 2007 stated that four CSS cadres i.e., Pakistan Railway Service, Pakistan
Postal Service, Commerce and Trade Group, and the Information Service of Pakistan, should be axed.
According to the recommendation, Postal and Railway Service should be made autonomous commercial
bodies, with Information Service be suspended till further notice. The report also highlighted broad
changes in the examination system, with the recommendation of a personality test be made part of the
selection process.

Indian Civil Service

Not to be confused with  Civil Services of India, formed post independence.

The Indian Civil Service, popularly known by its acronym ICS, originated as the elite civil service of the Indian
Government under British colonial rule in India, also known as Imperial Civil Service at a point, and continues
in the contemporary Civil Services of India, though these are now organised differently post-independence.

[edit]Colonial Civil Service

Under the East India Company administrators of their controlled territories were engaged. These became the
Honourable East India Company Civil Servants (HEICS)

There were two exclusive groups of civil servants during this formative stage of British rule in India. The higher
employees who entered into covenants with the Company came to be known as "covenanted" servants,
whereas those not signing such agreements came to be known as "uncovenanted". The latter group generally
filled the lower positions. This distinction between the covenanted and the uncovenanted virtually came to an
end with the constitution of the Imperial Civil Service of India based on the recommendations of the Public
Service Commission, 1886–87, though the phrase covenanted continued to be used of anyone in a salaried
position with a long term contract — including boxwallah peddlers. The name Imperial Civil Service was
changed to Civil Service of India. However, the term Indian Civil Service (ICS) persisted. The acronym ICS
continued to be used to denote the covenanted civil servants.

A third group, the Statutory Civil Service which functioned in the second half of the nineteenth century, was
disbanded by the beginning of the 1890s. To this group were recruited young men from respectable and
affluent Indian families. This service was replaced by the provincial civil services, which was constituted on the
basis of the recommendations of the Aitchison Commission. It consisted of two cadres, Provincial Civil Service
and Subordinate Civil Service. Further developments took place as a result of the application of the scheme of
cadre organization to the administrative departments. Thus, for example, the departments of Forest and Public
Works had both the imperial, and provincial branches. The basic pattern of the cadre system in the civil service
was thus established following the recommendations of the Aitchison Commission.

In 1912, the Islington Commission was appointed but its report could be published only in 1917, when the
recommendations contained in it became outdated due to the First World War and the August Declaration of
1917. Therefore no consideration was given to them. By 1934, the system of administration in India came
gradually to consist of seven All India Services and five Central Departments, all under the control of
the Secretary of State, and three Central Departments under joint Provincial and Imperial control. The ICS and
the Indian Police (Service) were in the 'transferred field', that is, the authority for the control of these services
and for making appointments were transferred from the Secretary of State to the provincial governments. It
seems relevant to mention that the All India and class I central services were designated as Central Superior
Services as early as 1924 in the Lee Commission's report.

After the partition of India, the parts of the civil service were renamed Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP)
in Pakistan while the Indian section retained the name Indian Civil Service.

Gurusaday Dutt was the first Indian to stand first in one of the two parts of the ICS examination, in 1905.