MeraTax.fyiSanctioned · In position · Vacant

The post was funded. Nobody was hired.

A budget argument is easy to deflect: governments say they spend what they can afford. A vacancy is harder. The post exists, the money for it was voted, and the chair is empty anyway. Across 51,96,597 sanctioned elementary teaching posts, 11,97,893 were unfilledsrc.

Funded posts empty23.1%src
Vacant11,97,893src
In position39,98,704src
Sanctioned51,96,597src
Why this and not spending

A vacancy is an argument that cannot be answered with “no money”

Every figure below is the government’s own: a sanctioned strength it set, and an in position count it published against that. The gap is not an estimate, a projection, or a campaign target. It is the difference between two numbers in one official table — which is why this page shows the arithmetic rather than a headline.

Each cadre carries the date its figures are as on, printed beside the number rather than buried. Where the most recent published table is several years old, the page says so in the same breath as the figure. The build refuses to ship a cadre more than five years old that does not.

State subject

Elementary school teachers

Elementary school teachers

Ministry of Education · as on 31 March 2020 (2019-20)

23.1%of funded posts empty
39,98,704 in position11,97,893 vacantof 51,96,597 sanctioned

How old this is. The most recent state-wise figures the Ministry of Education has released in machine-readable form are for 2019-20, tabled in a Rajya Sabha reply in 2023. Treat this as the last published position, not as today’s.

Worst by rate: Uttar Pradesh 54.6%, Jharkhand 39.2%, Bihar 35.9%, Andhra Pradesh 30.8%, Rajasthan 27.1%. Ranked by share of funded posts, not by count — ranking by count would only re-rank the states by population.

StateSanctionedIn positionVacantVacant %
Uttar Pradesh8,79,6913,99,1484,80,54354.6%
Jharkhand1,91,6791,16,56975,11039.2%
Bihar5,92,5413,79,7352,12,80635.9%
Andhra Pradesh1,48,7851,03,02545,76030.8%
Rajasthan3,14,2712,29,23685,03527.1%
Chhattisgarh1,96,8061,47,09149,71525.3%
Madhya Pradesh3,63,0992,88,74474,35520.5%
Uttarakhand46,05339,0487,00515.2%
Telangana1,06,73091,35915,37114.4%
West Bengal4,54,8603,93,79461,06613.4%
Tripura35,09130,6554,43612.6%
Assam1,82,4391,59,58722,85212.5%
Maharashtra3,24,8013,01,23823,5637.3%
Karnataka2,03,8241,91,45112,3736.1%
Meghalaya22,63221,7568763.9%
Haryana65,44663,9281,5182.3%
Manipur16,16715,8213462.1%
Gujarat2,17,1062,13,0674,0391.9%
Nagaland17,33017,0133171.8%
Tamil Nadu1,47,9131,45,5512,3621.6%
Mizoram2,2282,193351.6%
Arunachal Pradesh14,24514,0591861.3%
Kerala1,26,3821,25,0111,3711.1%
Goa2,2162,21600.0%
Himachal Pradesh45,99745,99700.0%
Odisha2,29,0062,29,00600.0%
Punjab75,80575,80500.0%
Sikkim8,5738,57300.0%

Union Territories are listed by the source but excluded from this table and from the per-state ranking: they are outside the 28 states the Finance Commission devolves to, which is the list every other page here uses. They are still inside the national totals above.

State subject

State police

State police

Bureau of Police Research & Development, Ministry of Home Affairs · as on 1 January 2023 (2023)

21.4%of funded posts empty
21,41,305 in position5,81,364 vacantof 27,22,669 sanctioned

Worst by rate: West Bengal 39.4%, Mizoram 35.1%, Haryana 31.9%, Bihar 28.9%, Gujarat 28.6%. Ranked by share of funded posts, not by count — ranking by count would only re-rank the states by population.

StateSanctionedIn positionVacantVacant %
West Bengal1,65,06999,99765,07239.4%
Mizoram11,3027,3393,96335.1%
Haryana87,81359,83927,97431.9%
Bihar1,44,3501,02,66441,68628.9%
Gujarat1,23,44388,11235,33128.6%
Telangana86,05861,81124,24728.2%
Goa10,8067,8312,97527.5%
Maharashtra2,32,9651,72,38260,58326.0%
Uttar Pradesh4,27,7003,17,7471,09,95325.7%
Jharkhand82,85461,91720,93725.3%
Tripura29,68222,9346,74822.7%
Arunachal Pradesh15,29811,9233,37522.1%
Odisha69,69055,65614,03420.1%
Chhattisgarh80,13564,50215,63319.5%
Andhra Pradesh1,06,36888,05418,31417.2%
Madhya Pradesh1,25,3811,04,34821,03316.8%
Sikkim6,8575,7241,13316.5%
Meghalaya16,84014,0962,74416.3%
Rajasthan1,13,42195,32518,09616.0%
Manipur35,10030,2174,88313.9%
Punjab85,32473,87011,45413.4%
Kerala61,69253,8177,87512.8%
Assam81,76773,1888,57910.5%
Karnataka1,11,4261,01,9119,5158.5%
Tamil Nadu1,32,4621,22,4709,9927.5%
Himachal Pradesh19,20717,9171,2906.7%
Nagaland26,70925,2521,4575.5%
Uttarakhand22,41521,3161,0994.9%

Union Territories are listed by the source but excluded from this table and from the per-state ranking: they are outside the 28 states the Finance Commission devolves to, which is the list every other page here uses. They are still inside the national totals above.

Union

High Court judges

High Court judges

Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice · as on 17 March 2025 (2024-25)

31.7%of funded posts empty
766 in position356 vacantof 1,122 sanctioned

Worst by rate: Allahabad 50.6%, Orissa 45.5%, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh 40.0%, Gujarat 38.5%, Punjab and Haryana 37.6%. Ranked by share of funded posts, not by count — ranking by count would only re-rank the states by population.

CourtSanctionedIn positionVacantVacant %
Allahabad160798150.6%
Orissa33181545.5%
Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh25151040.0%
Gujarat52322038.5%
Punjab and Haryana85533237.6%
Calcutta72462636.1%
Jharkhand2516936.0%
Madhya Pradesh53341935.8%
Delhi60392135.0%
Rajasthan50341632.0%
Patna53371630.2%
Bombay94662829.8%
Himachal Pradesh1712529.4%
Telangana42301228.6%
Chhattisgarh2216627.3%
Manipur54120.0%
Karnataka62501219.4%
Andhra Pradesh3730718.9%
Uttarakhand119218.2%
Gauhati3025516.7%
Madras75651013.3%
Kerala474436.4%
Meghalaya4400.0%
Sikkim3300.0%
Tripura5500.0%

Reported by court, not by state, and the two do not line up: the Bombay High Court covers Maharashtra and Goa, Guwahati covers several north-eastern states. These rows are therefore never placed on a state map or ranked against state cadres. The Supreme Court is excluded from the totals above and counted separately.

What is missing

Cadres not here yet

Health is the one that should be here and is not. The figure everyone quotes — that roughly seven in ten sanctioned specialist posts at rural Community Health Centres are empty — comes from the Ministry’s Rural Health Statistics, now published as Health Dynamics of India. It is not on this page because we have not been able to read the primary document: on 19 August 2026 the ministry’s own links returned 404, its HMIS download endpoint returned 500, and main.mohfw.gov.in did not resolve at all. Reproducing the number from news coverage would be exactly the shortcut this site exists to avoid.

The health data that is machine-readable on data.gov.in was checked on 18 August 2026 and rejected twice over: the 2013 table is mostly “NA”, and the 2021 table gives vacancy counts with no sanctioned strength to divide by, with several states reporting a literal zero where they mean “did not report”. Publishing it would have shown those states as fully staffed.

Central government civilian posts are next: the Department of Expenditure’s annual pay report gives ministry-wise sanctioned and in-position counts, but only its older editions are still online at the archive path. Both remain open.