cuttack bhubaneswar the cuttack bench of the central administrative tribunal cat on monday imposed a stay on the indian police services limited competitive examination lce 2012 which was scheduled on may 20 the cat bench gave the direction in response to a batch of petitions filed by state police officers praying to quash the examination which was introduced by the union public service commission upsc this year some dsprank police officers of odisha had filed petitions alleging that the limited exam conducted by upsc to overcome shortage of ips officers in the country will affect their careers the petitioners alleged the exam would block promotion quota of odisha police service ops officers to ips rank many of the dsp rank officers would not be able to appear the exam due to age limit constraints they said the petitioners alleged the exam was arbitrary and urged cat to quash it adjudicating the petitions cat had issued notice to the union ministry of home affairs to file its reply to the matter but it did not respond cat had issued notice to the centre government to file its reply but there was no response the cat heard the matter in detail and imposed a stay on the exam said aditya das the petitioners counsel recruitment to ips is done through competitive examination from open market conducted by upsc and promotion of state police service officers while twothird of the vacancies is filled up through direct recruitment the remaining is supposed to be filled up through the state promotion quota spq last year the centre with a view to overcome shortage of ips officers and paucity of training facilities decided to introduce a third method of recruitment by holding a limited competitive examination lce in which only assistant commandants of central paramilitary forces cpmf captain and major or equivalent rank officers of defence services and deputy superintendent of police dsp of state police service having five years experience and aged 35 years or less can appear there being no direct recruitment of dsps stopped since 1976 in odisha there is no scope for recruitment from the state police into ips through lce by the time subinspectors in the state reach the rank of dsp they invariably cross the age of 35 which means they would never be eligible to appear for lce a police officer said