E-Paper
Former Kerala DGP Sreelekha joins BJP
With the induction of the the first woman IPS officer into the party fold, the membership drive of the BJP got a huge boost
Former director general of police (DGP) R Sreelekha joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala on Wednesday. With the induction of the the first woman IPS officer into the party fold, the membership drive of the BJP got a huge boost.
Sreelekha, who retired as the director general of the Kerala fire and rescue services in 2020, formally accepted the party membership from state BJP president K Surendran at her residence in Thiruvananthapuram.
After accepting the BJP membership, the retired IPS officer told reporters, “I served as a non-partisan officer for 33.5 years. But after my retirement, I began looking at many issues from a distance. That is when I realised that this is the best path to do public service. I have belief and faith in the party’s ideals.”
She said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s influence and policies brought her to the party.
Surendran said, “Sreelekha is extremely familiar to the people of the state. She was a brave officer who led several reforms within the police force. She took many decisions against human rights violations as well as to cement the role of women in the police force. She is also a well-known writer. I hope that her years of experience and her leadership will boost the BJP and its worker-base.”
Sreelekha, who joined the IPS service in 1987, started her professional innings as the assistant superintendent of police in Cherthala in Alappuzha district and later served as the superintendent of police (SP) in Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta and Thrissur districts. She has also worked extensively with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as the SP in Kerala and as deputy inspector general (DIG) in the national bureau in Delhi.
After serving as ADGP (vigilance) and ADGP (police home guards, community policing, gender justice), Sreelekha was promoted as DGP in 2017, becoming the first woman in the state to occupy the rank. She served as the director general of prisons and correctional services before retiring as the head of the fire and rescue services in December 2020.
