First Muslim Director of Intelligence Bureau gets the post by Govt moving 4 officers with higher seniority out
Syed Asif Ibrahim, a 1977 batch IPS officer from Madhya Pradesh cadre is set to become the next Director and head of Intelligence Bureau (IB). He is the first Muslim to lead an intelligence agency in India. Before this appointment, he has been the special director in the IB handling cyber operations and security. He will take over from Nehchal Sandhu who is retiring on Dec 31, 2012
Before he came into IB, he was the private secretary to the then Railway Minister Madhav Rao Scindia.
What is disconcerting – and one hopes that it wasn’t so controversial when the first Muslim headed the IB – is that FOUR officers SENIOR to Ibrahim have been moved out of IB to clear his way to become the DIB. Why?
Most probably it is vote bank politics of the worst kind by the Congress Party.
The second in command at present in the organisation is R N Gupta, a 1976 batch IPS officer of Himachal Pradesh cadre, has been shifted as Officer on Special Duty to the Cabinet Secretariat while V Rajagopal of the same batch from UT cadre, has moved to Joint Intelligence Committee.
Yashovardhan Azad, a 1976 batch officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, who was also in the reckoning for the post of DIB, has been shifted as Secretary (Security), an organisation under the Cabinet Secretary, and is the administrative head of the Special Protection Group (SPG), responsible for closely monitoring the security arrangements of the Prime Minister, former Prime Ministers and members of their immediate families in India and abroad.
The Secretary (Security) is also actively involved in the preparation and review of Crisis Management Plan and National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC) besides review and updating of Union War Book.
The fourth senior officer S Jayaraman, a 1977 batch officer of West Bengal cadre, moves to National Police Academy at Hyderabad.
Wonder what to make of this guy then, except that he has pulled good enough strings and used his religion to upstage his seniors to get where he wanted to.