Officers from the Indian Police Service have taken control of all key investigative, intelligence gathering and security agencies like the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Special Protection Group (SPG), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), under the new dispensation. The thrust on appointing IPS officials at posts that require deep understanding of the security scenario is in consonance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's style of working, in which he prefers using specialists in place of generalists. This is a departure from the previous practice of appointing people from other administrative cadres to these posts.

Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs said that National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Kumar Doval, who is himself from the IPS cadre, also played a key role in pushing for appointing specialists at these vital posts. The fact that PM Modi chose Doval as his NSA, shows the intention of the former to entrust the vital job to someone who is an expert in internal security.

Doval's experience is totally different from his predecessor in the UPA government, Shivshankar Menon, who was a seasoned diplomat, more known for his skills in international affairs and geopolitics than in security. Doval, on the other hand, made his name in internal security and law enforcement.

Anil Kumar Sinha, who was appointed the CBI director after replacing Ranjit Sinha, is an IPS officer of the 1979 batch. Similarly, Dineshwar Sharma, who has been recently appointed as the director of internal spy agency IB is also an IPS. The 1989 batch Gujarat cadre Vivek Shrivastava, who was made the SPG chief, is also from the IPS. The latest of all these appointments, Rajinder Khanna as the chief of R&AW, was also done with the intention of appointing a specialist.

Khanna was originally from the IPS cadre, but later moved to the Research and Analysis Service (RAS) cadre. Similarly, another RAS cadre officer, Arvind Saxena, was appointed as the director of the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), a wing of R&AW, which reports directly to Doval. It was Doval who pushed for appointing former R&AW chief Alok Joshi, who was also originally from the IPS cadre, as the new head of the NTRO.

There have been numerous instances in the past where officials from other administrative cadres have been made chiefs of these posts. In the past, Ashok Chaturvedi, a 1970-batch IAS officer, was appointed R&AW chief. In early 2000, Vikram Sood, who was from the Indian Postal Service, was made the R&AW chief. Most recently, the name of D.P. Sinha, a Tripura cadre IAS officer, was almost finalised for the post of IB chief following the retirement of Asif Ibrahim, but the need to have an IPS officer was felt and Dineshwar Sharma was made the new IB chief.