Retd IAS officer Kalsi appointed police plaints authority chief
CHANDIGARH: Punjab government on Thursday appointed retired IAS officer NS Kalsi as chairman of state’s Police Complaints Authority (PCA) for three years.
Kalsi, who retired as an additional chief secretary (home) on June 30 last year, was the frontrunner for the post but his appointment was got delayed because the government took time to iron out the legal hitches. Two members of the authority would be notified later, a home department official said.
Even as Punjab had constituted the PCA in 2014 by appointing retired home secretary DS Bains as its chairman, the appointment was challenged in the Punjab and Haryana High Court through a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by advocate HC Arora and later the state government revoked the notification on Bains’s appointment.
Since Arora had challenged the appointment citing SC guidelines in 2006 as per which only a retired high court or SC judge can be appointed as the chairman till the states have their own law. The previous SAD-BJP government in 2014 amended the Police Act to have state’s say in making the appointments, but Arora again challenged it in the high court.
The amendment gives the state power to appoint a retired civil servant as its chairperson.
The case is still pending in the high court and the next hearing is in April.
Arora said he will challenge Kalsi’s appointment in the high court as government cannot do it when the case is sub judice.
The authority has only the “recommendatory” powers to check the complaints of “corruption” and other “wrongdoings” by the police officers above the rank of an SP.