Delhi is always the first choice for IPS officers, but now it has reached a bizarre limit – making the force top heavy. The top two ranks of officials – Special Commissioners and Joint commissioners – are exceeding the Delhi Police’s sanctioned strength. Though Delhi Police are short of 6,000 staff, the top two ranks after Commissioner are touching a new high. The situation has reached a limit where to accommodate the special Commissioner of Police (CP) rank officials, the Delhi Police had to create a post – ‘Senior Special CP’ – who will look after other special CPs job.
According to the Delhi Police, the sanctioned strength of the Special CPs is 10, but currently 14 special CPs are working in Delhi. Similarly, the Delhi Police have two extra joint commissioners in the Capital.
The sanctioned strength of Joint Commissioners is 20, and there are 22 Joint Commissioners in the Delhi Police. The Delhi government also raised concerns about promoting the Special CP rank officials to Senior Special CP rank and will raise this issue with Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung as it claimed that ‘Senior Special Commissioner’ post doesn’t exist as per rules.’
In the first week of August, Delhi Police had introduced a new position of senior special commissioner. Currently there are three senior special commissioners – Vimla Mehra, Dharmender Kumar and Deepak Mishra – administration, special unit and law and order respectively – who are heading all special commissioners and reporting directly to the Commissioner of Delhi.
On the other side, actual forces required for law and order, investigation, security, etc, are much less than the sanctioned posts. According to the Delhi Police, the Capital has 348 sanctioned posts of Assistant Commissioners but currently there are only 262 ACsP in Delhi. Similarly, Investigative Officers in most of the cases, Sub-Inspector rank officials are also not sufficient and almost 600 more Sub-Inspectors are required. “Lower rank officials like ASI, SI, and Inspectors are waiting for their promotions. The government is giving them the salary of promoted officers but they are not promoted. These officials are responsible for investigation and maintaining law and order,” an inspector-level official said.
