The Yogi Adityanath cabinet’s new guideline for the selection and appointment of the state’s director general of police has dashed the hopes of many IPS officers. After the formation of the nomination committee, incumbent acting DGP Prashant Kumar may be made permanent.

This may give him a chance to hold the post of DGP for two years. If the government selects him as a permanent DGP, setting aside the seniority factor, this month, Kumar will retire two years after his selection i.e., November 30, 2026 instead of his scheduled retirement on May 31, 2025. He will get an additional 18 months after the completion of his retirement period.

After the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, eight DGPs have been appointed. Four of them were permanent. Among the permanent ones, OP Singh was the DGP for the maximum two years. Mukul Goyal was the last permanent DGP in UP.

Now, with the recent decision of the cabinet, Prashant Kumar, who is among the trusted officers of Chief Minister Yogi, can also get a chance to hold the post of DGP for two years. However, due to this many IPS officers will retire without becoming DGP. They include PV Ramasastri, Aditya Mishra, Sandeep Salunke, Daljit Singh Chaudhary, Bijay Kumar Maurya, MK Bashal, Tilottama Verma, Alok Sharma, Abhay Kumar Prasad, Deepesh Juneja and Neera Rawat. After Prashant Kumar’s retirement, the names of the officers retiring only after May 2026 will be considered for selection to the DGP post.

Apart from UP, acting DGPs were also appointed in eight other states –Uttarakhand, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Jammu and Kashmir. Of these, Jammu and Kashmir DGP RR Swain was made permanent by the Central government in August last year, after which he retired on September 30.

The Supreme Court had issued a contempt notice for appointing acting DGPs against the rules in the remaining eight states. Before filing its reply, the UP government has cleared the way to appoint a permanent DGP by making rules for the selection and appointment of DGP. With this, the two-and-a-half-year tussle between the UP government and the Union Public Service Commission regarding the appointment of a permanent DGP has also ended.

Prashant Kumar was made the acting DGP after Vijay Kumar retired on January 31, 2024, by superseding 16 IPS officers. They included Mukul Goyal, Anand Kumar, Shafi Ahsan Rizvi, Ashish Gupta, Aditya Mishra, PV Ramasastri, Sandeep Salunke, Daljit Singh Chaudhary, Renuka Mishra, Bijay Kumar Maurya, Satya Narayan Sabat, Avinash Chandra, Sanjay M Tarde, MK Bashal, Tanuja Shrivastava and Subhash Chandra.