Thiruvananthapuram: DGP (Prisons) T P Senkumar will replace K S Balasubramanian as the State Police Chief after the latter’s retirement at the end of this month.
The Cabinet that met here on Wednesday zeroed in on Senkumar after turning down a request by Mahesh Kumar Singla, who is a year senior to Senkumar.
Besides personal meetings with Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and the Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, Singla had also submitted a letter to the Chief Secretary to consider his candidature. But the government rejected the letter citing technicalities.
Senkumar’s name had been doing the rounds as probable replacement for Balasubramanian for quite some time.
While appointing K S Balasubramanian, the government had decided to consider only those with at least two years of service left to the post of the state police chief.
While Singla has less than two years left for retirement, Senkumar will retire only in May 2017, which has worked in his favour.