A legal battle has erupted over the appointment of West Bengal’s top police officer after Dr Rajesh Kumar, a 1990-batch IPS officer of the West Bengal cadre, filed an application in the Central Administrative
Tribunal (CAT) challenging the Union Public Service Commission’s decision to exclude him and two other senior-most officers—Rajiv Kumar (acting DGP) and Ranvir Kumar—from the panel for appointment as Director General of Police (Head of Police Force) in the state.
In his petition, a copy of which has been accessed by News18, Kumar argues that the exclusion violates the criteria laid down by the Supreme Court in Prakash Singh & Ors. v. Union of India (2006), the court’s clarification dated March 13, 2019, and the UPSC’s own guidelines issued on September 26, 2023.
According to the application, when the DGP (HoPF) vacancy arose on December 27, 2023, Kumar and the two other senior officers had more than six months of residual service remaining, fulfilling the mandatory requirement. The West Bengal government forwarded a panel of 10 eligible IPS officers to the UPSC in July 2025, each of whom had more than six months of service left.
The petition states that during the meeting held on October 30, 2025, to finalise the panel, the UPSC excluded the three senior-most officers on the grounds that they no longer had six months of service remaining as on the meeting date. Instead, the commission recommended officers with longer residual service. Kumar contends that the decision was arbitrary and discriminatory, noting that he was not provided the minutes of the October 30 meeting, and that UPSC had applied the vacancy-date rule correctly in a comparable case involving the Rajasthan DGP appointment in 2023-24.
The application asserts that the exclusion lacks rational basis, violates Article 14 of the Constitution, and denies him a legitimate expectation of being considered for the highest police position in the state. Kumar sought to set aside the October 30, 2025, decision and requested that the finalisation of the panel and the subsequent DGP appointment be made subject to the outcome of his application.
“The Applicant, being amongst the three senior-most officers of the West Bengal cadre, with an unblemished record of over 34 years of distinguished service, had a legitimate expectation of being considered for the post of DGP (HoPF) in accordance with law. The arbitrary exclusion of the Applicant from the panel has caused him grave prejudice and denied him the opportunity to serve in the highest position in the State police force, a position for which he is eminently qualified by virtue of his seniority, experience, and exemplary service record,” the petition states.
At present, Rajiv Kumar is serving as the acting Director General of Police in West Bengal. Rajiv Kumar is considered a close aide of Mamata Banerjee, and the Bengal chief minister sat on dharna for him in 2019 when he was being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
For now, the state bureaucracy is awaiting the appointment of a permanent DGP.
