Fast and Furious! Yogi 2.0 to revamp UP’s law & order

Mumbai: Uttar Pradesh’s ascetic Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is close to making his Director General of Police (Intelligence) Devendra Singh Chauhan the full-time DGP of the state. Chauhan currently holds additional charge as DGP after CM Adityanath, in consultation with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, unceremoniously shunted out Mukul Goel from the post earlier this month.

In an unprecedented move, the UP Chief Minister wrote a scathing and rude letter to Goel pulling him up for deliberately failing to follow government orders and lacking integrity in his work, among other charges of a more incriminating nature.

“DS Chauhan’s appointment as DGP of UP is more or less finalized for his commendable intelligencegathering abilities and delivery,” a senior BJP leader told First India.

A dossier on Goel had, among other things, cited his involvement in a major police recruitment scam under the erstwhile Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party government before the Yogi 1.0 government was ushered into the state in 2017.

The dossier also revealed that, previously, Goel had opted for a Central deputation immediately after BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) chief Mayawati took over the reins in UP and lodged criminal offences against him, returning only when the Akhilesh Yadav government was in place. Interestingly, when he was appointed DGP in 2021, full-page congratulatory advertisements followed in several leading news dailies—inserted by industrial houses and jewellers— an aspect that upset CM Adityanath given that most of these advertisers were known SP financiers.

The last straw was Goel’s hobnobbing with Akhilesh Yadav in the run-up to the 2022 state assembly polls, convinced as he was of the SP emerging as the new ruling party. The daily briefings by a DGP appointed by his government to Yadav on police affairs—his exclusive domain— rubbed the ascetic CM the wrong way

Devendra Singh Chauhan’s diligent collation of a lot of intelligence data with a laser-focused approach that will have a strong bearing on UP’s future course in handling law and order better worked in his favour, according to those familiar with the issue.

Bishwajit Mahapatra (DG, Special Investigations), Gopal Lal Meena (DG, CB CID), Dr RP Singh (DG, Training)—all with a minimum of six months of service left—are also qualified to become UP’s next DGP besides Devendra Chauhan, a 1988-batch IPS (DG Intelligence), Anand Kumar, a 1988-batch IPS (DG, Fire Services) Dr Raj Kumar Vishwakarma (PSR and PB) and Chandra Prakash (DGP, Special Enquiries).