18 IPS Officers Across States Set to Retire in January 2026

A total of 18 Indian Police Service officers across multiple state and union territory cadres are scheduled to retire in January 2026, spanning batches and postings across the country's policing structure.

The retiring officers include Anjani Kumar and G Pala Raju from the Andhra Pradesh cadre, while the AGMUT cadre sees the retirement of Shashi Bhushan Kumar Singh and Nuzhat Hassan, officers who served within the union territory administrative structure covering Delhi and several other smaller jurisdictions.

From Bihar, Dilnawaz Ahmad is set to superannuate, alongside Jagdish Dawar from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, while the list also includes S G Wayse Patil from Maharashtra, Anil Kumar Tank from Rajasthan, and Abhay Kumar Singh from Tamil Nadu, reflecting the geographic spread typical of a monthly IPS retirement cohort drawn from cadres across the country.

The Uttar Pradesh cadre accounts for two of the retiring officers, Rajesh Kumar Singh and Babita Sahu, while Safi Ahsan Rizvi and N S Napalchyal are retiring from the Uttarakhand cadre, rounding out the northern and central state representation within this retirement cohort.

West Bengal contributes the largest single-cadre group in this list, with five officers, Rajeev Kumar, Ranveer Kumar, Rajesh Kumar, Jag Mohan, and Debabrata Das, all ending their service in the same month, a concentration that will require the state's police leadership to manage a comparatively larger set of senior-level vacancies arising simultaneously.

IPS retirements are governed by the standard superannuation age applicable to All India Service officers, with retirement dates determined by each officer's date of birth rather than any coordinated scheduling, meaning monthly retirement cohorts of this kind reflect the natural distribution of birth dates across a service rather than a deliberate administrative grouping.

States affected by these retirements will need to manage the resulting vacancies at senior police leadership positions through their standard promotion and transfer processes in the weeks following each officer's superannuation date.

Retirement cohorts of this size across a single month typically prompt each affected state to begin its succession planning process well in advance, since senior IPS vacancies arising from superannuation often need to be filled through promotion of eligible officers from the rank immediately below, a process that itself requires departmental promotion committee clearance before the vacancy can be formally filled. The spread of retiring officers across cadres as varied as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal reflects how All India Service recruitment patterns from three to four decades ago continue to shape the current distribution of senior retirements across state cadres today.

Each retiring officer's date of superannuation falls within January 2026 based on individual birth-date records, and the respective state cadre authorities are expected to manage resulting vacancies through their standard promotion and posting processes in the following weeks.