UPSC initiates process to select full-time DGP for Telangana

Hyderabad: The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Friday initiated the process of appointing a full-time Director General of Police (DGP) for Telangana, writing to the state govt and asking it to submit a list of eligible DGP-rank officers.The move comes weeks after the Supreme Court directed the UPSC to complete the process of selecting a full-time DGP for the state.
Sources said the UPSC has asked the state govt to treat Feb 5 — the date on which the Supreme Court issued its order — as the date of occurrence of the vacancy.This has triggered intense discussions within the police department over who qualifies under the criterion. The in-charge DGP, B Shivadhar Reddy, is scheduled to retire at the end of April. Whether his name will be included in the list of eligible officers to be sent to the UPSC remains a subject of speculation.The state govt has been instructed to forward the panel of eligible officers at the earliest."UPSC shall determine the eligibility of the officers who currently fall in the zone of consideration and shall, accordingly, determine their inter se merit for the purpose of empanelment," the Supreme Court said in its Feb 5 order.Along with Telangana, similar communications were reportedly sent to nine other states that had earlier failed to comply with the Supreme Court's judgment in the ‘Prakash Singh vs Union of India' case and had appointed in-charge DGPs instead of regular DGPs (Head of Police Force) as per the prescribed guidelines.At present, Telangana has six serving DGP-rank officers — CV Anand, B Shivadhar Reddy, Prabhakar Apte, Sowmya Mishra, Shikha Goel and Abhilasha Bisht. The state govt is expected to decide in the coming days which names will be forwarded to the UPSC, which will then shortlist three officers for consideration.