New Delhi: The Central Reserve Police Force, India's largest paramilitary organisation, is considering bringing back two Army-style ranks that were done away with nearly three decades ago, in a move aimed at ending crippling stagnation in promotions among its lowest ranks and making the force more attractive to Agniveers retiring from the Army, officials said on Saturday (October 17, 2026).
The ranks in question are lance naik and naik, military designations that were abolished in the force in 1997 and folded into the police ranks of constable and head constable through an order of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The two ranks remain in use in the Indian Army, where they form the first steps of a jawan's climb up the ladder.
According to officials who spoke to the Press Trust of India, the CRPF headquarters has asked hundreds of field formations across the country to hold stakeholder consultations, known in service parlance as Sainik Sammelans, and collect the views of personnel on the proposal within two days. The speed of the directive suggests the proposal is being taken up seriously at the highest levels of the force.
The idea, as officials described it, is straightforward: restore the two abolished ranks so that a constable who joins the force gets his first promotion to lance naik after five years of service, rises to naik after ten years, and reaches head constable after twenty years — the progression that existed before 1997.
The CRPF and the Border Security Force both carried these ranks on the lines of the Army's infantry battalions until the Home Ministry's 1997 order changed the structure.
The proposal is rooted in a long-festering problem. The CRPF, which today numbers around 3.25 lakh personnel, is facing acute stagnation in promotions among its constabulary. Officials said a constable currently waits between 22 and 25 years, on average, for his first promotion — a wait so long that many jawans spend the better part of their careers in the same rank.
That one-rank stagnation has generated persistent grievance among the rank and file, and the force's leadership appears to have decided that structural change, rather than stopgap fixes, is needed.
"Reintroducing the lance naik and naik ranks would give constables two more promotion opportunities before they reach the head constable level," an official was quoted as saying, adding that the change would address long-standing grievances and lift morale across the force. For thousands of personnel who joined the force in their youth and have waited decades for even a first step up, the prospect of a formalised, time-bound ladder is significant.
The move is also being seen as a deliberate step toward absorbing Agniveers — the short-term military personnel recruited into the three armed forces for four-year terms under the Centre's Agnipath scheme — into the Central Armed Police Forces. Officials said the first batch of Agniveers will begin retiring from the Army later this year and will be eligible to join the CAPFs, including the CRPF.
Restoring Army-style ranks familiar to these soldiers could make CRPF service more appealing to them, easing their transition from military to paramilitary service.
At present, the CAPFs rely on an ad hoc workaround for this problem. Constables are granted a non-sanctioned "senior constable" insignia on their uniforms, which makes them equivalent to lance naik in appearance, but the arrangement has no legal sanction and there is no equivalent at all for the naik rank. The proposal would replace that informal practice with proper, sanctioned ranks.
The reaction from the force's fraternity has been cautiously optimistic. Ranbir Singh, secretary general of the Ex-Paramilitary Personnel Association, said the proposed change would genuinely benefit jawans only if promotions to the restored ranks are time-bound — otherwise, he warned, the exercise would prove futile. His caution reflects the experience of many personnel, who have seen promotion reform discussed before without the follow-through that matters on the ground.
A senior CRPF commandant struck a similar note from inside the force, telling PTI that the reintroduction of the two Army ranks "should not just be a cosmetic move and should ensure that the discipline of the battalion is maintained." The officer pointed out that a battalion of more than 1,000 men and women currently has more than 20 subordinate officers, and any change in the rank structure must keep in view the regimentation and operational efficiency of a unit.
The concern is a real one: adding ranks at the lower end will alter the command chain within platoons and companies, and the force will need to define clearly the authority and responsibilities that come with the restored insignia.
The proposal lands at a moment when the CRPF is under unusual strain. The force has been at the centre of India's internal security apparatus for decades — deployed across Naxal-affected regions, the Kashmir Valley, the Northeast, and on election duty across the country — and its constabulary bears the heaviest burden of that deployment.
For a force that asks its youngest members to serve in some of the country's toughest postings, the knowledge that a first promotion may arrive only after two decades has been a persistent source of discontent, raised repeatedly by veterans' groups and raised in Parliament over the years.
The Agnipath dimension adds a new urgency. When the Centre launched the Agnipath scheme, it promised that retiring Agniveers would be given preference in recruitment to the CAPFs and state police forces. With the first batch set to exit the Army this year, the government and the CAPFs face the practical question of how to absorb thousands of trained young men and women into structures that were never designed around them.
A rank ladder that mirrors the Army's own hierarchy could lower that barrier — a lance naik who leaves the Army would find a familiar designation and a recognisable chain of promotion in the CRPF.
Whether the proposal clears the many hurdles ahead — the views of hundreds of field formations, vetting by the force headquarters, and ultimately approval from the Ministry of Home Affairs — remains to be seen. The 1997 abolition itself came through a ministry order, and any restoration would almost certainly need one.
But the very fact that the CRPF has begun gathering views from the rank and file marks a notable shift: it signals that the force's leadership is treating promotion stagnation not as an administrative inconvenience but as a structural problem requiring a structural answer.
For the thousands of constables who have waited decades for a first promotion, and for the Agniveers weighing their options as their four-year terms near their end, the next steps of this proposal will be watched closely.
(Reporting based on The Hindu and Hindustan Times.)