‘IPS Officers’ Retirement Date Not Of UPSC’s Concern’:SC Reserves Order On Plea Questioning DGPs’ Appointment Process

The Supreme Court on Thursday (28 February) reserved its order on a petition challenging the practice of preparing a panel of IPS officers with two years or more of service left for the appointment of Directors General of Police in states, overlooking a number of other senior officers with excellent service records, reports The Sentinel.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, Justice L. Nageswara Rao and Justice Sanjiv Khanna reserved its order as counsel Prashant Bhushan said that the Union Public Service Commission’s (UPSC) refusal to empanel people with less than two years of service was causing havoc and many senior officers were resigning.

Bushan reportedly said that UPSC was acting according to the 3 July 2018 order which had said, “Our direction No.(c) should be considered by the UPSC to mean that the persons are to be empanelled, as far as practicable, from amongst the people within the zone of consideration who have got clear two years of service. Merit and seniority should be given due weight.”

As far as the UPSC was concerned, the date of the IPS officers’ retirement was not relevant to it, CJI Gogoi observed: “You want that the original order in the Prakash Singh case (also known as police reform case) should be restored.”

However, Attorney General K.K. Venugopal said that states were appointing favoured officers as acting DGPs and then as these officers neared the retirement age, they were appointed regularly giving them an extended service of two years.

Venugopal also reportedly left it to the court to spell out the “reasonable” remaining term before an IPS officer’s superannuation to be considered for empanelment for appointment as the DGP.