THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: DGP (Prisons) T P Senkumar is tipped to replace K S Balasubramanian as the State Police Chief after the latter’s retirement at the end of May. His name had been doing the rounds as probable replacement for Balasubramanian, and according to sources, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala turned down a request by Mahesh Kumar Singla and zeroed in on Senkumar who is a year junior to Singla.
Singla, a 1982-batch officer, is now serving as the Director-General of the Border Security Force. Sources said that the decision to appoint Senkumar would be taken at a Cabinet meeting before May 31 when Balasubramanian retires.
Besides personal meetings with the CM and the Home Minister, Singla had submitted a letter to the Chief Secretary to consider his candidature. But the government rejected the letter citing technicalities.
Sources said Singla had less than two years left for retirement, which also worked against his favour. While
appointing K S Balasubramanian, the government had decided to consider only those with at least two years of service left to the post of the state police chief.
DGP K G Premsankar, who was senior to Balasuramanian, was excluded as he had only nine months left for retirement then. Another officer senior to Balasubramanian was Arvind Ranjan who was on Central deputation. Section 18 of the Kerala Police Act 2011 says DGP rank officer who serves in the state should be considered for being appointed as the DGP which also prompted the Ministers to discard Singla’s candidature.