The race for the Delhi police’s top spot has intensified with the AAP government reportedly recommending a panel of four seniormost IPS officers to lieutenant-governor Najeeb Jung. The name of the next police chief will be decided only after the file is approved by the Union home ministry.
The government has reportedly recommended the names of director-general (Tihar Jail) Alok Verma, special commissioners of police Dharmendra Kumar, Vimla Mehra and Deepak Mishra for the top post of the city police. Mr Verma, a 1979 IPS officer of the Arunachal, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories (AGMUT), is said to be the frontrunner for the post as he is the seniormost cop of the Delhi police. Other top contenders for the post are 1984-batch IPS officer Dharmendra Kumar and his batchmate Deepak Mishra, who is in-charge of the city’s law and order.
Police commissioner Bhim Sain Bassi, who took over the top job of the force in August last year, is set to retire in February next year. Mr Bassi is said to have already started lobbying for his post-retirement job.
A source said that Ms Mehra’s chances of getting selected for the top job are bleak as she had run into controversy after she had unveiled her own life-size statue inside the Tihar Jail. This was perhaps the first occasion when a serving DG had reportedly used her powers to install her statue. She had been accused to violating the rules for sanctioning '30 lakh from the prisoners’ welfare fund for her own statue. Following the controversy, the AAP government had removed her from the Tihar post.
The issue of appointment of police commissioners of Delhi police has not been without controversies. The most recent controversy was when senior IPS officer Kiran Bedi was superseded to appoint her junior Y.S. Dadwal as the police commissioner in July 2007.
Ms Bedi had gone on record saying that at a time, when the then President of India as well as the erstwhile chairperson of the ruling alliance UPA were women (Pratibha Patil and Sonia Gandhi respectively), it would have done a lot of good for country’s image as well as for the upliftment of women if she had been appointed. She resigned soon after in protest, although her official line was that she wanted to devote more time to social work.
Mr Dadwal had also got the distinction of becoming the longest serving commissioner of the police force in Delhi, who served for a period of 41 months (2007-2010).
