After a delay of over 8 months, Departmental Promotions Committee (DPC) was held recently to give its nod for the elevation of three senior Indian Police Service (IPS) cadre officers to Director General (DG) grade.

 

However, in a strange turn of developments, the proceedings to ‘pre and post’ DPC meet were kept quite confidential.

The DPC cleared the names of 1988-batch IPS officers Sanjay Pillay and Rajinder Kumar Vij and 1989-batch IPS officer Ashok Juneja. Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has given his approval to the DPC recommendations and after due process the order will be released in a day or two.

 

“The DPC meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Rajendra Prasad Mandal was attended by Director General of Police (DGP) Durgesh Madhav Awasthi and Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Subrat Sahoo. Sources revealed that the much delayed and much-waited DPC meeting was consequential to an official official communiqué by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which was received by the Office of Chief Secretary, Chhattisgarh Government, on December 9, 2019. “However, there were unforeseeable circumstances like Covid-19 pandemic followed by lockdown that led to the delay in convening the DPC meeting,” the sources added.

 

It is pertinent here to recall that the MHA communiqué was in response to State Government’s letter no (1-10/2017/2-Grih/IPS) dated 20-11-2019 on the subject seeking concurrence of Central government over the vacancies for promotion in DG cadre, in terms of Rule 12 (7) of IPS (Pay) Rules 2016. The MHA communiqué had also underlined that the above promotions to be made strictly in accordance with the guidelines by Government of India and asked the state to forward the promotion notification to the MHA for record purpose. In the meantime, sources, also averred that some vested interest within the State Administration deliberately impeded the official process to get their own people benefited by this unforeseeable delay for promotion on DG grade.