Lucknow: With Uttar Pradesh acting Director General of Police (DGP) Prashant Kumar retiring next month, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday targeted the state government and said the next one to get the post will again be acting with Singh as last name.
“A decision (on appointment of DGP) is to be taken soon… I can say that he will again be ‘acting’ with Singh as his last name,” Yadav said while talking to reporters at the SP headquarters here.
Kumar, a 1990 batch was appointed as the acting DGP in January, 2024 and is set to retire next month. He is the fourth consecutive acting DGP of UP.
No full-time DGP has been appointed in the state after the removal of Mukul Goel on May 11, 2022 for “not taking interest in departmental work and inefficiency”.
After Goel, D S Chauhan took over as the acting DGP and retired in April 2023.
Later, R K Vishwakarma served as the acting DGP for over a month before Vijay Kumar was appointed to the post on May 31, 2023, handing over the charge to Kumar last year.
The former chief minister said he did not want to elaborate on the reasons behind appointing an acting DGP in the state.
Yadav had attacked the state government earlier also on the appointment of acting police chiefs.
“(We don’t know) whether acting DGP is being appointed every time because of a ‘tussle’ between Delhi and Lucknow or because of a ‘nexus’ between the government and the criminals,” Yadav had earlier said.
