CPIL Moves Supreme Court Challenging Rakesh Asthana's Appointment As Delhi Police Commissioner

The Centre for Public Interest Litigation has moved the Supreme Court challenging the appointment of Rakesh Asthana, IPS as the Commissioner of Police, Delhi.The Plea has been moved through Advocate Prashant Bhushan and it goes on to pray that the order of appointment of Asthana as Delhi Police Commissioner by the Union of India be quashed.Delhi Police Commissioner, Rakesh Asthana is a 1984-batch Gujarat cadre IPS officer who took charge as Delhi Police Commissioner recently.The plea avers that just four days before this retirement, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued the order of his appointment as Delhi Police Commissioner thereby extending his service initially for a period of one year beyond the date of his superannuation on 31.07.2021.The plea states that the appointment order is in clear and blatant breach of the directions passed by Apex Court in the Prakash Singh case (2006) 8 SCC 1 as Asthana did not have a minimum residual tenure of six months; No UPSC panel was formed for the appointment of Delhi Police Commissioner; and The criteria of having a minimum tenure of two years had been ignored"The post of Commissioner of Police in Delhi is akin to the post of DGP of a State and he is the Head of Police Force for the NCT of Delhi and therefore, the directions concerning the appointment to the post of DGP passed by this Hon'ble Court in the Prakash Singh case (supra) had to be followed by the Central Government while making the impugned appointment," states the plea.In related news, a petition seeking to initiate contempt of court action against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah over the decision to appoint Rakesh Asthana as the Delhi Police Commissioner was mentioned before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.Advocate ML Sharma, who has filed the contempt petition, mentioned the matter before the Chief Justice of India for urgent listing on Monday, August 9."Let us see if it is numbered. Let the petition be numbered first. We will see", CJI Ramana said.Sharma argued in his petition that the decision is in violation of a July 2018 judgment of the Supreme Court in the case Prakash Singh & Others v.Union of India which said that the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) should, as far as possible, consider only those officers for such appointments who have two years of service left.Asthana, a 1984-batch Gujarat cadre IPS Officer, was appointed as Delhi Police Commissioner on July 27, just four days before he was scheduled to retire from service. The Union Home Ministry, which oversees the Delhi Police, granted Mr Asthana one year's extension in service "in public interest".

CPIL Moves Supreme Court Challenging Rakesh Asthana's Appointment As Delhi Police Commissioner

Sparsh Upadhyay

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