BharatNotes There are 25 cadres today: 23 state-based cadres and 2 joint cadres (AGMUT and Assam-Meghalaya), including Telangana (carved from undivided AP in 2014); the J&K cadre was merged into AGMUT in 2021. Under the DoPT 2026 OM, they are distributed across 4 alphabetical Groups. UP has the largest sanctioned strength (652), Sikkim the smallest.
The full cadre map (DoPT 2026 grouping)
Group I (5 cadres)
AGMUT — Andhra Pradesh — Assam-Meghalaya — Bihar — Chhattisgarh
Group II (7 cadres)
Gujarat — Haryana — Himachal Pradesh — Jharkhand — Karnataka — Kerala — Madhya Pradesh
Group III (8 cadres)
Maharashtra — Manipur — Nagaland — Odisha — Punjab — Rajasthan — Sikkim — Tamil Nadu
Group IV (5 cadres)
Telangana — Tripura — Uttarakhand — Uttar Pradesh — West Bengal
Total: 5 + 7 + 8 + 5 = 25 cadres.
Joint cadre composition
- AGMUT — Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, and all Union Territories: Delhi, Puducherry, Chandigarh, Andaman & Nicobar, Lakshadweep, Dadra & Nagar Haveli–Daman & Diu, Jammu & Kashmir (merged in 2021), and Ladakh (UT since 2019).
- Assam-Meghalaya — IAS officers serve across Assam and Meghalaya in rotation.
Cadre size — the broad picture
Cadres differ greatly in size, and size drives how many fresh IAS officers a cadre absorbs each year. The broad, verifiable picture:
- Uttar Pradesh is the largest IAS cadre and absorbs the most fresh officers each batch; AGMUT and Madhya Pradesh are also among the largest.
- Sikkim is the smallest cadre and may take very few — sometimes zero — fresh officers in a given year.
- A cadre's annual intake depends on its sanctioned strength, retirements that year, the state-civil-service promotion quota, and carried-forward backlog.
For exact, current cadre-wise sanctioned strength and in-position numbers, consult the DoPT/MHA Civil List and the cadre-strength statements published by the Ministry of Home Affairs — these are revised periodically, so avoid relying on second-hand figures.
Why size matters for your DAF
A larger cadre means more annual vacancies, which directly increases the chance of allotment if you rank it high. UP absorbs the most fresh IAS officers each batch, while the smallest cadres sometimes take none in a given year.
Quick maths on insider odds
If UP has 18 fresh vacancies in a year, insiders get ~6 of them (one-third). If 200 UP-domicile candidates apply, only the top 6 by merit get UP as insiders. A rank below ~600 in the General list rarely converts into a UP-insider seat.
Why some cadres always have more vacancies
Annual fresh-IAS intake into each cadre follows a proportional-to-sanctioned-strength formula roughly, but is moderated by:
- Retirements that year (large old-batch cadres see more retirements → more replacements).
- Promotion of state-civil-service officers to IAS (each cadre has a SCS-promotion quota that competes with direct-recruit intake).
- Vacancy backlog carried forward from previous years.
UP, the largest cadre, takes the most fresh IAS officers each CSE batch, while the smallest cadres (e.g. Sikkim) may take only one or none in a given year. (For exact per-batch intake, see the year's service-allocation list.)
Mentor's note
Don't memorise this table for the exam — memorise it for DAF-II filling. The difference between Uttar Pradesh (large, varied) and Sikkim (small, hill state) is not a coaching myth; it is 35 years of your professional life.
