Hyderabad: With the apex court’s four-week deadline to send a shortlisted panel of officers to the Telangana govt for the Head of the Police Force (HoPF) post, officers were keen to see how the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) determined the top three senior-most officers.As per UPSC guidelines for the appointment of an officer to the post of DGP (HoPF), the state govt should send a list of DGP-rank officers from its cadre. One key rule that drew attention was the quantum of service remaining for those officers. “The officer(s) should have residual service of six months or more from the date of occurrence of vacancy in the post of DGP (HoPF),” the guidelines state.The guidelines also specify that the state govt should send the list of DGP-rank officers to the UPSC for empanelment at least three months before the vacancy arises.While Anurag Sharma, the last HoPF appointed through a UPSC panel, retired in November 2017 after serving for two years, the state govt did not send a list of DGP-rank officers to the UPSC for the HoPF selection procedure until April 2025. The UPSC objected to that and returned the list sent in April, and did the same with the second list sent in December.With Supreme Court directions to complete the HoPF appointment process within four weeks, officers said it would be interesting to see how the UPSC interprets the “residual service of six months” rule.“We are assuming that UPSC will use the list sent by the state govt in December for selecting the three senior-most officers. One has to wait and see if the commission counts former in-charge DGP Jitender’s superannuation at the end of September 2025 as the date of vacancy. If that is the case, B Shivadhar Reddy would be eligible to be empanelled,” said a senior police officer.The senior-most officer on the list was 1991-batch officer CV Anand, who had two years and four months of service remaining. Second in seniority was 1994-batch officer Vinayak Prabhakar Apte, with three years and eight months of service left, while the third on the list was his batchmate B Shivadhar Reddy, who had only about three months of service remaining until April 2026.Other DGP-rank officers from the Telangana cadre included 1994-batch officers Soumya Mishra and Shikha Goel. “The govt will pick one of the three officers from the list sent by UPSC for the post of HoPF. As per the Supreme Court directions in the Prakash Singh vs Union of India case, the new HoPF will have a minimum tenure of two years, irrespective of his or her date of superannuation,” said a former top cop.MSID:: 127994466 413 |
