City police commissioner to quit
Exactly a year after he took over as Hyderabad city police commissioner, Balwinder Singh has decided to step down. The commissioner met chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy two days ago and expressed his intention to quit as the top city policeman and return to the North.
High-level state government sources told TOI that Balwinder Singh had cited personal reasons for not wanting to continue. “Apparently, he has some personal problems back in Punjab that need to be sorted out. We had told him to go on leave and settle the issue but he insisted that the ‘problem’ needs his long-term personal presence and hence wants to quit the post,” a senior official said.
Sources also suggested that Balwinder was in line to be empanelled as additional director general in central police organisations and had expressed a desire for taking up a job with the central agencies. “He had earlier indicated informally that he would stick around till March but now wants to go earlier,” a highly-placed source said.
With his resignation likely to be accepted in a day or two, a race has begun for the Hyderabad police chief’s post. Balwinder, an AP cadre IPS officer of the 1976 batch, took over as the 42nd city police chief on Jan. 12, 2007. Those in the reckoning for Balwinder’s job include additional DGP (law & order) B Prasada Rao (1979 batch) and additional DGP (intelligence) K Aravinda Rao (1977 batch), whose name always crops up whenever there is a vacancy for the top job. Whether Rao is interested in the job is not known.
According to sources, personal problems in Punjab continued to dog Balwinder ever since he took over. He had also gone on leave a few months ago to New Delhi and Ludhiana to sort out his problem. “However, that has not worked because of which he wants to go back for good,” the official said. All through his tenure, Balwinder’s wife remained in New Delhi visiting him only on the weekend.
It was during Balwinder’s one-year term that the city witnessed the Mecca Masjid and Lumbini Park/Gokul Chat Bhandar twin blasts, putting Hyderabad on international terror focus. “The crime graph has been very much under control, there has been no conventional law and order problem other than the bomb blasts. With his impeccable manners no official with whom he worked had any problems,” an official said.
But the issues that Balwinder said he would tackle on a war-footing when he took over from A K Mohanty largely remain unsolved. Balwinder had then listed dealing with the land mafia and eradicating white collar crime as his two main objectives. Before coming to Hyderabad, Balwinder had a long stint in the Central Vigilance Commission and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Source : The Times of India
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