Rajyotsava gift: Karnataka gets its first woman DG & IG

BENGALURU: Chief minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday set aside all political considerations and stuck to his policy of giving the senior-most officer the top police post, thus making Neelamani N Raju the first woman Director General and Inspector General of Police (DG&IG) of Karnataka.

A 1983-batch IPS officer, Neelamani Raju has a tenure of two years and a month. She succeeds RK Dutta, who retired on Tuesday.

There was hectic lobbying for the post with two IPS officers -HC Kishore Chandra and MN Reddi -in the race.Chandra had the backing of Vokkaliga politicians, but sources said the CM did not buckle under pressure and honoured seniority.


“Giving importance to seniority and making a woman the head of the force will bring the government a lot of goodwill in an election year,“ said an official in the chief minister's office. Raju was on central depu tation for 23 years, and returned to the state in 2016. Her last central deputation was with the Intelligence Bureau in Delhi.

On returning to Karnataka, Raju waited for two months before she was posted as DG (internal security). Raju's husband Narasimha Raju was the former principal secretary to Siddaramaiah from 2014 to 2016 and later had a short stint as information commissioner of Karnataka after his retirement. She hails from Roorkee in Uttarakhand.