Techies to Top Cops: Engineers Dominate Passing Out Parade at SVPNPA
The 151 officer trainees formed up on the parade ground for inspection before the National Flag and Academy Flag were brought in for the salute.
Hyderabad:Merugu Kaushik was in the city during Ganesh immersion and his interest was in how the police managed the crowds using advanced technologies and AI. The former Capgemini employee from Jangaon was among five Telangana-origin Indian Police Service (IPS) probationers who passed out at the parade at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy (SVPNPA).
Kaushik and Nalgonda's Penkeesu Dheeraj Reddy have been allotted Maharashtra, Chowhan Rajkumar from Adilabad to Rajasthan and K. Arpitha to Uttar Pradesh. Hyderabad's N. Chetana Reddy is the only one among them allotted the Telangana cadre.
The 151 officer trainees formed up on the parade ground for inspection before the National Flag and Academy Flag were brought in for the salute. The IPS oath preceded the ceremonial march-past, for which the academy band played ‘Kadam Kadam Badhaye Ja’. Punjab-cadre officer Gourav Uppal commanded the parade and received the Director's Trophy as the best overall probationer in Phase I training. Union home aecretary Govind Mohan reviewed the parade in the presence of Director General of Police C.V. Anand and academy director Sujeet Pandey
“We have both practical and theoretical classes on crowd management, including hands-on demonstrations. We were sent to observe Ganesh Visarjan in association with Hyderabad police. We saw how artificial intelligence was used to monitor crowds, especially around Tank Bund, alongside QR codes on vehicles, trackers and CCTV cameras,” said Kaushik, a Maharashtra-cadre IPS probationer who cleared the civil services examination on his first attempt.
Uppal, who hailed from Kapurthala in Punjab, graduated in mechanical engineering from Delhi Technological University. His academic background was shared by a majority of the Indian probationers, as 76 of the 135 IPS officers had engineering degrees. An equal number had previous work experience. The parade also included 16 officers from Bhutan, Nepal and the Maldives, who trained alongside their Indian counterparts for 45 weeks.
Chetana Reddy belonged to both groups, having studied electronics and communication engineering at BITS Pilani's Hyderabad campus before working at Qualcomm and Nvidia. Kaushik had graduated in civil engineering from Osmania University and completed an MBA at IIFT Delhi before entering consulting. Rajkumar, meanwhile, studied at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya and NIT Warangal, while Dheeraj Reddy pursued humanities through Osmania University's distance education programme.
Their different educational and professional backgrounds also meant that physical training was a new experience for some. Chetana Reddy, who had no competitive sporting background, said the academy's structured training helped probationers develop the fitness required for policing. The same parade saw the Sword of Honour go to someone who had spent years training as an international athlete and trained in Hyderabad under Pullela Gopichand.
Kuhoo Garg, a former India No. 1 and world No. 34 in mixed doubles badminton, received the IPS Association's Sword of Honour for the best outdoor probationer. Garg's achievement was part of a strong showing by women, who secured four of the eight principal trophies awarded during the ceremony. Lekzin Pelden Lhamo of the Royal Bhutan Police received two honours, the BSF Trophy for proficiency in outdoor subjects and the Director's Trophy for the best foreign officer trainee. Assam-cadre IPS probationer Aarushi Sharma received the Manipur Cup for Law.
Women accounted for 37 of the 151 officer trainees, including 34 of the 135 Indian IPS probationers. The parade concluded the probationers' 45 weeks of academy-based training, though their professional training is far from complete. They will now undergo four weeks of attachments before beginning 29 weeks of district practical training on November 23.