Central Services

The personnel of Central services work under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Central government. They hold specialised (functional and technical) positions in various departments of the Central government.

Before Independence, the Central services were classified into class-I, class-II, subordinate and inferior services. After Independence, the nomenclature of subordinate and inferior services was replaced by class-III and class-IV services. Again in 1974, the classification of Central services into class-I, class-II, class-III and class-IV was changed to group A, group B, group C and group D, respectively2 .

At present, there are 62 group A Central services. Some of them are:

1. Central Engineering Service.

2. Central Health Service.

3. Central Information Service.

4. Central Legal Service.

5. Central Secretariat Service.

6. Indian Audit and Accounts Service.

7. Indian Defence Accounts Service.

8. Indian Economic Service.

9. Indian Foreign Service.

10. Indian Meteorological Service.

11. Indian Postal Service.

12. Indian Revenue Service (Customs, Excise and Income Tax)

13. Indian Statistical Service.

14. Overseas Communication Service.

15. Railway Personnel Service.

Most of the above cadres of group A Central services have also corresponding group B services. The group C Central services consists of clerical personnel while group D consists of manual personnel. Thus group A and group B comprises of gazetted officers while group C and group D are non-gazetted.

Among all, the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) is the highest central service in terms of prestige, status, pay and emoluments. In fact, it (though a central service) competes with the all-India services in position, status and pay scales. It comes next to the IAS in ranking and its pay scale is higher than the IPS.