KOZHIKODE: In an apparent political move, the state government has slashed the number of Personal Security Officers (PSO) to former Union Ministers from Kerala. While five PSOs were granted earlier, now, three each from the former ministers’ staff were called back, as per the directive issued by the Additional Director General of Police (Intelligence), Special Branch Criminal Intelligence Department, Thiruvananthapuram. Most of the former ministers are known to have returned the additional forces as directed by the department and the rest are in the process of returning the force. According to sources, people’s representatives do not need protection from the public and they did not need even the sanctioned strength of two.
“Vide reference cited, the Government has ordered to scale down the existing scale of security and to provide ‘X’ scale of security arrangements to ---. At present, five police personnel of SBCID (Security) wing, Thiruvananthapuram are performing PSO duty. As part of the implementation of the above Government order, it is requested to take necessary action to redirect three among the following PSOs with direction to report before SP (security), SBCID (security) wing, immediately,” reads the letter from the office of the ADGP (Intelligence). “We received the letter in the first week of January and the requested three PSOs were redirected to the SBCID (Security) wing with a direction to report before SP (security) SBCID wing, on January 11,” said sources close to a former minister.
