NEW DELHI: Senior IPS officer Vivek Srivastava was today appointed as Inspector General in the elite Special Protection Group (SPG) which guards Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other VVIPs, including the Gandhi family.
Srivastava, a 1989-batch IPS officer of Gujarat cadre, will be the senior-most IPS officer in the elite force and may thereby be made the officiating SPG chief.
Srivastava was the head of the Patna unit of Intelligence Bureau last year when Modi's rally in the Bihar capital was attacked by a splinter group of banned terror outfit, Indian Mujahideen (IM).
He was also involved in the operation leading to the arrest of Yaseen Bhatkal, one of the founder members of IM. SPG was headless after K Durga Prasad, a 1981-batch Andhra Pradesh batch IPS officer, was moved out on Nov. 25.
Prasad was appointed as director of SPG in 2011 for a period of two years, which was extended by one more year in 2013 up to Oct. 31, 2014.
Sources said that the 1981-batch officer had written to the Cabinet Secretary over his fate post the completion of his tenure whereupon the government decided to ease him from the post.
After a fortnight, the name of Srivastava, at present a Joint Director in Intelligence Bureau, was cleared by the Appointments Committee of Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister.
Srivastava's term with SPG is being treated as a deputation from the Intelligence Bureau so that, upon completion of his term, he can return to the snoop agency.
SPG looks after the security of the Prime Minister, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her two children -- Rahul and Priyanka -- and former Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.