Senior IPS officer Dineshwar Sharma to be appointed as next IB chief

Senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Dineshwar Sharma is set to be appointed the next Intelligence Bureau (IB) director and will succeed Syed Asif Ibrahim. [caption id=“attachment_1835825” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Sharma, an IPS officer from the 1979 batch of the Kerala cadre, according to this Deccan Herald report is currently the Special Director of IB. Sources told Deccan Herald that the decision was taken by PM Narendra Modi on Thursday after consultations. Modi began the consultations with senior Cabinet ministers and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and attached extreme importance to internal security and intelligence, calling them a ‘priority area’, according to this Deccan Chronicle report. Syed Asif Ibrahim was the first Muslim to be appointed the IB director and had taken over from Nehchal Sandhu, Ibrahim also superseded four IB officers who were senior to him when he was appointed the IB head, according to this report in The Times of India. The report also said that Ibrahim had served as the IB special director and supervised cyber operations and security before becoming the IB head.