The Supreme Court of India has issued a notice to the Tamil Nadu government seeking its response within three weeks on a contempt plea alleging the state’s failure to appoint a regular Director General of Police (DGP) as per the Court’s prior orders.The plea contends that the government has willfully violated Supreme Court directives by continuing with an acting DGP instead of appointing a permanent police chief.
A bench headed by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice K. Vinod Chandran directed the Tamil Nadu government to respond to the plea filed by Kishore Krishnaswamy. The petitioner highlighted that despite the Supreme Court’s clear direction on September 8, 2025, for Tamil Nadu to “forthwith appoint a regular DGP” from a panel of names recommended by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), no such appointment has been made even after more than two months.
The previous DGP, Sankar Jiwal, retired on August 31, 2025, and since then, IPS officer G. Venkataraman has been functioning as the in-charge DGP on an ad-hoc basis. The plea argues that the post of “acting DGP” is unknown to the law and contradicts the binding orders established in the landmark Prakash Singh case, which mandates merit-based, fixed-tenure appointments of police chiefs insulated from political pressures.
The petitioner further alleged that the Tamil Nadu government deliberately delayed appointment to suit political interests ahead of the scheduled 2026 state assembly elections, citing that the acting DGP was “handpicked” by the ruling dispensation and functions merely as their “echo chamber” rather than an independent head of the police force.