The war within the Kerala bureaucracy has reached the Supreme Court yet again. Senior IPS officer TP Senkumar approached the Supreme Court for a second time around on Saturday with a contempt petition against Kerala Chief Secretary accusing her of disobeying the court’s order directing his reinstatement as head of Kerala Police.
Senkumar had won an order from the Supreme Court on April 24 directing his reinstatement as Director General of Police, a post that he held from May 22, 2015. But he was removed by the Pinarayi Vijayan Government that took over in the State in May 2016, thus bringing an abrupt end to an otherwise two-year tenure. He is due to retire in June this year and hardly has two months before he can expect to reap the benefits of the SC order.
In the contempt petition, Senkumar pointed out that soon after the order of reinstatement, he wrote a letter to the Chief Secretary to implement the court order by issuing appropriate directions. The IPS officer said, “The intention of the respondent contemnor (Chief Secretary), who is the authority to issue order of reinstatement, seems to delay the implementation willfully so that the petitioner will not get the fruits of the decree which he has got.”
The Bench is expected to take up the petition soon considering that the summer break of the court is fast approaching and by the time it reopens early July, the petitioner would have superannuated.
As an additional request, Senkumar in his petition has even requested the court to consider extending his tenure as DGP by adding the period when he was illegally removed to his current service. Already, Senkumar has a grudge that the order of his removal as DGP was passed at the instance of the present Chief Secretary. However, on paper, the Kerala Government had blamed Senkumar for failing to contain the public outrage over police inefficiency in two crimes — Jisha murder case and Puttingal fire tragedy. The SC gave him a clean chit as it found nothing on record to suggest blame on part of Senkumar in either of the two crimes. In the alternate, the Bench directed that a DGP cannot be removed on a State Government’s whim and fancy.
