Congress slams Centre over report on 800,000 vacancies in posts

E-PaperSubscribeSubscribeEnjoy unlimited accessSubscribe Now! Get features like The Congress on Monday alleged that more than 800,000 posts remained unfilled across 21 ministries and departments of the central government. Citing media reports in posts on its social media handles, the party said vacancies had risen from about 420,547 in 2015 to 823,556 in 2024. The data shared by Congress showed vacancies in 21 ministries and departments such as Railways, Health, home, commerce, higher education. HT ImageHT could not independently verify the authenticity of the figures. According to a Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure’s report on the Annual Report on Pay and Allowances for 2023-24, there were 823,556 vacancies against a sanctioned strength of 3,923,212 on March 1, 2024. Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha also linked the rising vacancies to reservation and said that the issue is not just about unemployment but about justice too. “The question is not just about employment, but about social justice. Keep government posts vacant, and the opportunity for reservations ends. Sell off PSUs, and reserved jobs end. Convert permanent jobs to contracts, and reservations end. To end reservations, it’s not necessary to amend the Constitution—just eliminating jobs with reservations is enough. This is the agenda of the BJP, which opposes social justice. Keep posts vacant. Sell off PSUs. Increase contracting. And snatch away the constitutional rights of SC, ST, OBC, EWS. The BJP policy of conspiring to end the rights granted by Babasaheb’s Constitution has now been exposed,” Kharge said. The BJP is yet to respond to the allegations. On July 30, 2026, union minister Jitender Singh had said in a reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha that the Government has issued instructions to all Ministries/Departments for ensuring timely action for reporting of vacancies in respect of direct recruitment to concerned recruitment agencies, viz. UPSC and SSC, for filling up of such vacancies in a time bound manner. “Vacancies in the Union Government have been filled-up in mission-mode and several lakh appointment letters have been distributed to recommended/ selected candidates in National Rozgar Mela events being held regularly October 2022,” he said in his written reply. In response to a specific question from Rajya Sabha MP, AA Rahim, regarding the number of candidates the SSC recommended for different ministries in the last four years, Singh said, “During the last four years, i.e. 2022-23 to 2025-26, the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) has recommended about 3.61 lakh candidates based on the vacancy requisitions submitted by various Ministries/Departments to the SSC.”