Barely three days before the crucial meeting scheduled in New Delhi to finalise the panel of officers for appointment as Director-General of Police/head of police force, the Union Public Service Commission has called for a revised list of eligible officers from the Tamil Nadu Government.
Tamil Nadu DGP J.K. Tripathy is retiring on June 30.
While the names of seven qualifying DGP rank officers belonging to 1987 to 1989 batches of IPS was initially sent for empanelment, top sources in the police headquarters here said a revised list, including nine ADGP rank officers of the 1990 and 1991 batches, has been sent to the UPSC.
The UPSC follows a prescribed format, guidelines of the Supreme Court in the Prakash Singh case and a 360-degree assessment to shortlist three or five names to be sent to the State governments for choosing one as head of the police force. The Supreme Court had fixed a minimum residual service of six months for consideration of appointment to the top post.
C. Sylendra Babu belonging to the 1987 batch is the senior most IPS officer in the list followed by Karan Singha of the same batch. The third senior most officer is Sanjay Arora of the 1988 batch who is on central deputation and was on Wednesday posted as Special DGP, Central Reserve Police Force.
Others in the batch are Sunil Kumar Singh and P. Kandaswamy.
While the 1989 batch has Md. Shakeel Akhter and Braj Kishore Ravi, the fresh list sent to the UPSC comprises Shankar Jiwal, A.K. Viswanathan, Abash Kumar, T.V. Ravichandran (on central deputation), Seema Agrawal in the 1990 batch and Amraesh Pujari, M. Ravi, K. Jayanth Murali and Karuna Sagar of the 1991 batch. All these officers have the qualifying service of 30 years in IPS and are serving in the rank of DGP and ADGPs.
Going by the Supreme Court ruling in the Prakash Singh case, an officer posted as DGP/head of police force in a State will hold office for a minimum two years irrespective of the date of superannuation.
Though the UPSC cleared five names in 2017 and three names in 2019, the State government can insist on five names, going by provisions under the Tamil Nadu Police Establishment Act, sources said and added that the State Government can pick any one from the list sent by the UPSC to head the police force.
