New Delhi, Jan. 25 -- The Centre has revised the process by which IAS, IPS and IFoS officers are assigned to state cadres, a major overhaul as part of a plan to make allocations more uniform and transparent. The 2026 UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) Cadre Allocation Policy redraws the 2017 iteration of the framework, doing away with the zoning system and sets timelines for vacancies to be filled, according to an order issued by department of personnel and training director Yashu Rustagi on January 23. The Cadre Allocation Policy is a framework under which candidates selected for the All India Services are assigned to a particular state cadre or a Joint Cadre (many states and Union territories share the same cadre of officers). The Centre revised the policy for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS), and Indian Forest Service (IFoS) after consultations with state governments. Experts said the new policy brings uniformity in posting young officers across the country, will help make the services more pan-India and sets deadlines for postings. According to the 2017 policy, the states were grouped into different zones largely on geographical lines. For example, the AGMUT(Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and Union Territories) cadre was grouped in Zone 1 along with Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Rajasthan. Similarly, Zone 2 had states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha. Candidates who cleared the civil services exam had to pick their cadre preferences based on these zones. The new policy replaces these zones with groups, with states placed in alphabetical order. So now, the AGMUT cadre sits in Group 1, alongside Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh....