THE BLINK | INVESTIGATIVE DESK
BHUBANESWAR: Who should head Odisha Police?
Ordinarily, that should have been settled before the incumbent Director General of Police retired.
Instead, more than a month after Y.B. Khurania demitted office, Odisha Police continues to be headed by Vinaytosh Mishra on additional charge while a bitter dispute over the selection of the next regular DGP plays out before the Supreme Court.
The irony is difficult to miss.
The state entrusts its police chief with command of a force of roughly 70,000 personnel, responsibility for law and order, crime investigation, intelligence coordination, anti-Maoist operations and policing across 30 districts.
Yet its highest police office remains under an interim arrangement.
And the vacancy was anything but unexpected.
The government knew when the vacancy was coming
Odisha Home Department records reported from the official selection file show that Khurania’s tenure was due to end on August 16, 2026, creating the vacancy from August 17.
More significantly, the UPSC had written to Odisha on February 23, asking the state to send its proposal for convening the Empanelment Committee Meeting at least three months before the vacancy.
The Home Department began processing the matter in March.
So this was not an emergency created by an unforeseen resignation, death or sudden removal.
The date was known months beforehand.
Yet when Khurania left office, the government had no regularly selected successor ready to take over.
On August 16, Vinaytosh Mishra, then DGP, Crime Branch, took additional charge as Odisha DGP.
From three officers to eleven
The paper trail makes the story more significant.
Home Department file notings reported in the public domain show that the original assessment identified three DG-rank officers who satisfied the eligibility requirements: Sudhanshu Sarangi, Susanta Kumar Nath and R.P. Koche.
But the state subsequently forwarded a much larger pool to the UPSC.
The process then became entangled in questions over the inclusion of additional officers, promotions of two ADG-rank officers to DG rank, creation of temporary ex-cadre posts and the withdrawal of Susanta Kumar Nath’s integrity certificate.
These developments are now under Supreme Court scrutiny.
The state has defended its actions and disputed allegations that it violated the prescribed selection procedure. Petitioners, meanwhile, have alleged that the process was altered to facilitate consideration of officers outside the original senior pool.
Those allegations have not been judicially established.
But the Supreme Court’s questions have made the underlying chronology impossible to dismiss as routine administrative housekeeping.
The integrity-certificate question
One of the sharpest issues concerns senior IPS officer Susanta Kumar Nath.
The Odisha government had initially forwarded Nath’s name for consideration.
It later withdrew his integrity certificate after a CBI communication relating to the police Sub-Inspector recruitment investigation.
But before the Supreme Court, Nath’s counsel said he was not named as an accused in the CBI FIR.
The Court has consequently asked a crucial question: what precisely was Nath’s status in that investigation, and what did the Odisha government know when it first forwarded his name to the UPSC?
The Court has also sought clarity on whether Nath had actually been treated as an accused.
That distinction matters.
Being an accused in a criminal case, being under investigation, and merely being required for examination by an investigating agency are legally different situations.
And when the consequence is exclusion from consideration for the highest police office in the state, the basis for that decision must withstand scrutiny.
The larger issue is not one officer
It would be a mistake to reduce the litigation to a contest between individual IPS officers.
The case goes back to the principle laid down by the Supreme Court in Prakash Singh v. Union of India: selection of state police chiefs should be insulated from arbitrary political intervention through a structured UPSC-led process.
That is why the present litigation matters.
The question before Odisha is not:
Who does the government want as DGP?
The institutional question is:
Was the process used to choose the DGP transparent, consistent and compliant with the Supreme Court’s police-reform framework?
And meanwhile, an interim police chief
Vinaytosh Mishra’s appointment on additional charge is not itself evidence of illegality or administrative incapacity.
The state required someone to head the force after Khurania’s retirement, and Mishra was given that responsibility.
But the continuation of an interim arrangement exposes the consequence of the unresolved selection process.
The questions Odisha needs to answer
Why was a permanent successor not selected before August 16 when the vacancy date had been known for months?
Why did the pool move beyond the three officers originally identified as eligible?
What administrative necessity justified the subsequent promotions and temporary ex-cadre arrangements?
What exactly did the CBI communicate regarding Susanta Kumar Nath?
Was Nath an accused, a suspect, or merely an officer whom investigators wanted to examine?
What rule was invoked to withdraw his integrity certificate?
Were identical integrity standards applied to every officer considered for DGP?
And perhaps most importantly:
Were administrative changes made because the police hierarchy independently required them—or because the DGP selection process required a different pool of candidates?
The Supreme Court will decide the legal questions before it.
But the governance question already stands out.
Odisha knew when its DGP would retire.
It knew a permanent successor had to be chosen.
It had months to complete the process.
Yet today, one of the state’s most powerful institutions is being run through an additional-charge arrangement while the country’s highest court examines how the selection process itself was handled.
The issue is therefore bigger than who becomes Odisha’s next DGP.
It is about whether the process of choosing the person who commands the police can itself command public confidence.
