It was felt that there was more requirement of specialised manpower as the government plans to open nine more missions in the next few years and also to meet the growing need at current missions. The exercise is reminiscent of a similar restructuring of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) cadre post-liberalisation in the 1990s and the resultant expansion of the Indian economy. After the successful conduct of G-20 summit, the restructuring will result in increase in the strength of IFS officers at the entry level and also creation of more posts.

Cabinet took into consideration several factors while giving the go-ahead, including the need of more hands to steer the country's diplomacy in view of the acceptance of India-led initiative such as Global Biofuel Alliance, International Solar Alliance, Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure and International Yoga Day, among others. The external affairs ministry had mentioned how the average number of visits of senior government functionaries to countries that have Indian missions has increased from around 9-10 a year in 2014 to nearly 35-40 in 2023.

Early this year, the parliamentary standing committee on external affairs had recommended to the government to ramp up the manpower of India's diplomatic service in line with the country's desire to play a key role on the global stage. The panel had taken note of how the IFS is "most short-staffed" as compared to many other countries. It has mentioned in its report that the 1,011 IFS officers accounted for only 22.5% of the foreign ministry's total strength of 4,888.