New Delhi: Two days after the appointment of the new CBI director, the Centre on Thursday approved a one-year extension to Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) head Samant Kumar Goel and Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director Arvind Kumar.
Both IPS officers are of the 1984-batch. Goel is from the Punjab cadre and Kumar is from the Assam-Meghalaya cadre. The heads of the country's internal and external intelligence wings have a fixed tenure of two years.
Read:| IPS Subodh Kumar Jaiswal takes charge as Director CBI
India's premier agency CBI, which was functioning under an ad-hoc director for more than 100-days has now got a full-time director, soon other investigation agencies and paramilitary forces including NIA, SPG, BSF, CISF and ITBP will also be getting their new chiefs.
Sources in the North Block said that IPS officers have begun lobbying to reach the top of the intelligence agencies and paramilitary forces.
1984-batch officers, Rakesh Asthana of the Gujarat cadre, the DG of the Border Security Force (BSF) is retiring on July 31 and YC Modi of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, chief of National Investigation Agency (NIA) is retiring on May 31.
Read:| CISF chief Subodh Kumar Jaiswal appointed CBI director
Both the officers were among the top contenders for the post of CBI director but their names were dropped after CJI NV Ramana, in the selection committee meeting, eliminated their name citing the 2019 Supreme Court ruling which says that no officer with less than six months to retirement should be appointed as police chief.
As per the sources, Arun Kumar Sinha, 1987-batch Kerala cadre IPS officer, who is currently the Director of the Special Protection Group (SPG), can be the new DG of BSF. While 1987-batch IPS officer Sudhir Kumar Saxena of Madhya Pradesh cadre, who has been assigned an additional charge of DG, Central Industrial Security Force after Subodh Kumar was appointed the CBI director, can be given permanent charge of the force.
SS Deswal, 1984-batch IPS officer of Haryana cadre, currently working as Director General of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), will retire in August. As per the sources, Dinkar Gupta, a 1987-batch IPS officer of Punjab cadre, currently appointed as Punjab DGP can be the next chief of ITBP.
