Govt approves appointments of new NIA, NDRF, BPRD chiefs

Maharashtra cadre officer Sadanand Vasant Date has been appointed the new NIA chief, Piyush Anand the NDRF DG and Rajeev Kumar Sharma as the director general of BPRD. Date and Sharma are from the 1990 batch of the Indian Police Service (IPS) while Anand is of the 1991 batch.

Date, who is from the Maharashtra cadre, was awarded Presidents Medal for Gallantry for his role in saving lives and countering terrorist during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Date is currently heading the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). The NIA is the country’s premier investigation agency.

The three officers will take charge on March 31 upon the superannuation of the three current chiefs— Dinkar Gupta of NIA, Atul Karwal of NDRF and Balaji Srivastava of the BPRD.

Gupta was earlier the Punjab director general of police (DGP), Karwal was director of the SVP National Police Academy and Srivastava had held additional charge of Delhi police commissioner for nearly a month in 2021.

Ahead of the implementation of the three criminal laws, the BPRD is actively involved in training police officers across the country and working to create a backend software that connects police stations across the country. The BPRD has in the last three months completed training of trainer (ToT) for almost all police forces. Such ToTs will be training the other police personnel in the new laws.

The NDRF with a strength of over 18,000 personnel is the India national disaster response force.

Last year, the force was involved in the rescue operations at the Uttarakhand tunnel where 41 workers were trapped, the Turkey Syria earthquakes and the flash flood in Sikkim.

Apart from the three appointments, the ACC also approved the proposal of the Home Ministry to repatriate 1989 batch officer PV Ramashastri to his parent cadre – Uttar Pradesh. Ramashastri is currently the special DG (operations) in the BSF.