Close on the heels of the then Mumbai Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh quitting the Indian Police Service (IPS) and joining the BJP, Additional Director General of Police (Special Operations) Prem Kumar Jain has resigned from his post. Jain is likely to join the BJP.
Confirming his resignation, Jain said he had put in his papers on Friday and wanted to engage himself in “social work”. However, informed police said that Jain might join the BJP along the lines of Singh, who had resigned as the Mumbai Police Commissioner in the last week of January and formally entered the BJP at a rally addressed by the party’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi at Meerut in western Uttar Pradesh on February 3.
A 1981-batch officer, Jain resigned from the IPS in the wake of a controversy in the State IPS circles over the recent “out-of-turn” appointment of Rakesh Maria as the Mumbai Police Commissioner in place of Singh. The DF Government had appointed Maria, a 1981-batch officer, as the Mumbai CP after ignoring the seniority of at least three IPS officers. A major tussle between the two DF partners had preceded Maria’s appointment to the coveted post. While the Congress rooted for Javed Ahmed’s appointment, the NCP had its way in anointing Maria as the new CP.
In a related development, NCP chief Sharad Pawar has debunked the “trend” of senior IPS officers quitting their posts and joining the BJP. “Police officials joining the BJP after leaving services is a serious issue. Need to see that people in the administration must have secular credentials. A senior police official responsible for the security of Mumbai leaves his services and next day joins the BJP. This means he was working for past three decades with the same ideology,” Pawar said in a tweet.