High court judges FM Ibrahim Kalifulla and MM Sundresh had declared Saran’s appointment null and void on October 8 after hearing a petition filed by TN fire services director R Nataraj.
The Tamil Nadu (TN) government suffered another setback on Thursday with the Supreme Court (SC) refusing to stay the Madras high court order (HC) setting aside the appointment of Letika Saran as the state’s director general of police (DGP).
HC judges FM Ibrahim Kalifulla and MM Sundresh had declared Saran’s appointment null and void on October 8 after hearing a petition filed by TN fire services director R Nataraj.
The fire services chief had claimed that seniority was ignored in promoting Saran. He said on the seniority civil list, Saran was seventh, whereas he was third.
The TN government filed a special leave petition in SC against the HC verdict. It said operation of the HC order should be stayed since it had not violated any norms in appointing Saran. “The post of DGP is extremely sensitive and ought to be filled by a person in whom the state government has the highest confidence,” the government said.
“The post of DGP is not a promotion but a selection. There is nothing wrong if the state prescribes the procedure to be followed for selecting a DGP in the absence of central statutory rules or regulations,” it claimed.
HC has asked the government to start the process of appointing a DGP afresh by sending a new list of eligible candidates to UPSC by October 26. It has asked UPSC to name a panel from which a suitable candidate could be selected by November 30 and directed Saran to continue in the post till that time.
In fact, HC wanted the process to be completed by December 7 and asked the state to send a report by December 10.
An IPS officer of the 1976 batch, Saran had become the first woman DGP of TN after KP Jain retired. The TN government said it also considered Nataraj, N Balachandran and K Vijayakumar for the post, but decided on Saran.
Vijaykumar, who was director of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Hyderabad, was recently named director-general of CRPF in New Delhi.
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