Prashant Kumar, a 1990 batch officer of the Indian Police Service, has been appointed as the acting chief of Uttar Pradesh Police. This is the fourth consecutive time that instead of handing over the reins of UP Police to a permanent Director General, the state government has made arrangements for a temporary Director General. Acting Director General Vijay Kumar , on his last working day , performed the ceremony of handing over the baton to IPS Prashant Kumar . After this, Prashant Kumar had a courtesy meeting with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. IPS Prashant Kumar is the Special Director General (Law and Order) and he also holds the post of Director General (Economic Offenses Wing). For now, this charge will remain with him only.
Prashant Kumar is a resident of Siwan district of Bihar and is an IPS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre. Prashant Kumar, who was appointed acting chief of UP Police by ignoring 13 officers, has received many police honors and awards including gallantry medal. Prashant Kumar, a post graduate in Science, has also done MBA in Disaster Management and M.Phil in Defense and Strategic Studies. The tenure of 58-year-old Prashant Kumar is till May 2025. Until a permanent Director General is posted or any other order comes, IPS Prashant Kumar will hold the post of Chief of UP Police.
Senior officials of the state government said that in the order signed by Principal Home Secretary Sanjay Prasad, it was mentioned that Prashant Kumar will also hold the additional charge of acting DGP till a permanent appointment is made to the prestigious post of DGP.
In May 2022, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Yogi Adityanath government suspended the then Uttar Pradesh DGP Mukul Goel for “dereliction of official duty”, “lack of interest in departmental work” and “laziness”. . After this D.S. Chauhan, R.K. Vishwakarma, Vijay Kumar and, now, Prashant Kumar have been made acting DGPs.
In his latest posting, IPS officer Prashant Kumar has left behind 13 officers senior to him in the hierarchy. As per the UP IPS gradation list, these officers are Mukul Goel, Anand Kumar, Safi Ahsan Rizvi, Ashish Gupta, Aditya Mishra, P.V. Rama Shastri, Sandeep Salunke, Daljit Singh Chaudhary, Renuka Mishra, B.K. Maurya, S.N. Sabat, Avinash Chandra, S.M. Tara Dey, Manmohan Bashal, Tanuja Srivastava and Subhash Chandra.
The last time this happened was when Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav government was in power in UP. In 2016, the then Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav appointed Javid Ahmed as the DGP of UP. IPS Javid Ahmed had left behind at least 15 IPS officers of the same rank at that time.
