Cops ponder over future

HYDERABAD: With the Telangana bill having been passed by the Parliament, state police officers are trying to figure out their future postings from the ‘Civil List’. As there is a dearth of IPS officers from Telangana, several Seemandhra cops are likely to be posted here. An officer from the residuary state could therefore become the chief cop of Telangana.
General administration department (GAD) officials are already working on a formulae to allot the All India Service officers to the two sates. The sanctioned strength for Andhra Pradesh police cadre is 258 and currently there are 48 vacancies. Telangana, the 29th state in the country, would need about 110 to 120 IPS officers. As per the rules, one-third of the strength (37 to 40) should be officers of the state police service (SPS) while the remaining should be regular recruits.
As there are not enough officers to fill the SPS quota in Telangana, the state government has to post non- locals, including those from the residuary state until the new government fills the deficiency by conferring IPS ranks on non-cadre SPs.
Since the residuary state has more than the required number of officers, some of them might be posted in Telangana state. To decide on the distribution of IPS officers, GAD has devised a formula to divide the officers first into five-year batches based on rank and then allot them to the two states by following the necessary rules, including the caste-based reservation.
The senior-most officer in the state is Umesh Kumar of the 1977 batch, who is superannuating at the end of March 2014. So, 1977 batch to 1981 batch, there are 10 DG-rank officers, including Umesh Kumar, Ashok Prasad, TP Das, Aruna Bahuguna, Prasada Rao, SA Huda, NR Wasan, K Durga Prasad, AK Khan and J V Ramudu in the order of seniority.
Of these officials, only Aruna Bahugua is from Telangana and Prasada Rao, Durga Prasad, AK Khan and Ramudu are from the Seemandhra region. The remaining officers are from other states.
Assuming that the current DGP, B Prasada Rao, would be the new DGP of the residuary state, TP Das, Aruna Bahuguna and SA Huda would be the top three contenders for the top job of Telangana as Ashok Prasad is DGP of J&K and Umesh would be superannuating by March-end. But there is a good chance that either Das or Huda or even both getting allotted to the residuary state cadre and some junior officer like AK Khan might be allotted to Telangana cadre as a non-local office cadre and becoming DGP. There is also a provision that in case of state reorganization, officers with less than four years of service could chose their cadre and several officers might use this.
It is also important to note that after Aruna Bahuguna, the next senior-most IPS officer hailing from Telangana is Tejdeep Kaur Menon (1983) followed by M Mahender Reddy (1986). Tejdeep is likely to be promoted to the rank of DG in a few months. In the past few months, probe into various cases registered against Tejdeep Kaur Menon have been speeded up.
Sources in the department reveal that it was a ploy by the rivals to ruin the chances of Tejdeep Kaur from becoming top cop of Telangana.