With the promotion of seven IPS officers to the rank of Director General of Police (DGP), Punjab gets its first women officers to get the DGP rank. Also, the state’s police administration gets ‘top heavy’ with a total of 13 officers in the DGP rank now.
The 1993-batch IPS officer Gurpreet Deo is the senior-most among those promoted, becoming the state’s first women police officer in the DGP rank. Interestingly, she is also the state’s first woman IPS officer in the Punjab Police.
Another woman IPS officer, from the 1993 batch, Shashi Prabha Dwivedi has also been promoted from the rank of ADGP to DGP. Now, Punjab has two women IPS officers in the DGP rank.
As per the orders, issued by the Home Affairs and Justice Department, seven officers — all from 1993 batch — are “promoted to the rank of Director General of Police in Level-16 of the Pay Matrix with immediate effect”. Apart from Deo and Dwivedi, other officers include the state’s Vigilance director Varinder Kumar, Ishwar Singh, Jitendra Kumar Jain, Satish Kumar Asthana, and Rajendra Namdeo Dhoke.
Currently, the state has 13 offices in the DGP rank, led by the state police chief Gaurav Yadav — who is the officiating Head of the State Force (HoPF), followed by VK Bhawra, Sanjeev Kalra, Prabodh Kumar, Sharad Satya Chauhan, and Kuldeep Singh, besides the seven promoted on Monday.