Senior IPS officer Daljit Singh Chaudhary appointed director general of Sashastra Seema Bal

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Senior Indian Police Service officer Daljit Singh Chaudhary was on Friday appointed as the director general of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), a Personnel Ministry order said.

Chaudhary, a 1990 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, is presently working as a special director of the General of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved his appointment as the DG, SSB for a period up to November 30, 2025 i.e. the date of his superannuation, the order said.

The SSB guards India's frontiers with Nepal and Bhutan.

The top post in the central armed police force was lying vacant following repatriation of Rashmi Shukla to her cadre state Maharashtra earlier this month.

Shukla was appointed as Maharashtra's new Director General of Police (DGP), earlier this month. The state home department issued an order on the appointment of IPS Rashmi Shukla as the new DGP.

Rashmi Shukla, an Indian Police Service officer of 1988 batch, was posted as director general of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) on deputation.

Mumbai Police Commissioner Vivek Phansalkar was holding additional charge as DGP Maharashtra after Maharashtra DGP Rajnish Seth retired on December 31.

An order issued by the Eknath Shinde government had earlier said that Vivek Phansalkar will hold additional charge of the state's top police post till further orders, as per the PTI.

Meanwhile, in September last year, the Bombay High Court had quashed two FIRs registered against Rashmi Shukla for alleged illegal phone tapping, the PTI had earlier reported.

Two first information reports (FIRs) were filed against Shukla - one in Pune and another at Colaba in south Mumbai - for allegedly illegally tapping the phones of opposition leaders when Devendra Fadnavis was the chief minister of the state, as per the PTI.

The FIRs were registered when the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was in power.

The alleged illegal phone tapping had taken place when Shukla headed the state intelligence department (SID), police earlier said.

Shukla's counsel had informed the Bombay High Court that in the Pune FIR, the police had submitted a C-Summary report (case is neither false nor true) and had sought to close the case and in the Mumbai case, the state government had refused to grant sanction to prosecute Shukla, according to the news agency's report.

A division bench of Justices A S Gadkari and Sharmila Deshmukh had accepted this and quashed the two FIRs, as per the PTI.

The Pune case was registered for allegedly recording phone calls of Congress leader Nana Patole, while the Mumbai case was for recording phone calls of Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Eknath Khadse, who was earlier with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), according to the PTI.