3 top IPS officers in race for Bassi post

Amid reports that Delhi Police commissioner B.S. Bassi has applied for the position of the chief information commissioner, speculations are rife over his successor with three senior officers being in the race for the city top cop’s job.

According to highly-placed sources, it’s a tight race among three contenders — D-G (prisons) Alok Kumar Verma, special commissioner of police (special unit) Dharmendra Kumar and special commissioner of police (law and order) Deepak Mishra — for the top post in the Delhi police.

With special commissioner of police and former D-G (prisons) Vimla Mehra of the 1978 IPS batch scheduled to retire along with Mr Bassi, an IPS officer of 1977 batch, on February next year, Mr Verma (IPS 1979 batch) will be left as the senior-most IPS officer in the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre.

If Mr Verma becomes the top city cop in February, he shall be there for 17 months until his retirement, again leaving open the top cop’s position for Mr Kumar and Mr Mishra, both 1984 batch IPS officers, who are expected to serve 14 and 16 months more respectively, even after Mr Verma’s scheduled retirement, said the sources.

The sources said the recent prison-van incident, in which two inmates were murdered, may act as a “negative” for Mr Verma, giving edge to Mr Mishra, also known as an ace investigator and considered next to Mr Bassi in the department, and Mr Kumar, who was brought back to Delhi about 13 months after his transfer to Mizoram and placed here with a special designation created for him. Mr Kumar was the Law and Order chief at the time of the December 16 gang rape incident, for which Mr Mishra — then chief of operations — was pulled up, which gives the former an edge over the latter, the sources added. The post of the chief information commissioner falls vacant in early December.