The framework comes from the Supreme Court's 2006 judgment in Prakash Singh v Union of India, which held that a DGP should be selected through a merit-based, transparent process from among the senior-most officers of the state cadre, and should have a minimum tenure of two years irrespective of the date of superannuation. The directions were intended to insulate police leadership from political turnover.

The court tightened the procedure in an order of 3 July 2018, and clarified it further on 13 March 2019, in an order by a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Sanjiv Khanna. Under that framework the states "shall send their proposals in anticipation of the vacancies to the Union Public Service Commission, well in time at least three months prior to the date of retirement" of the incumbent. The UPSC empanels three officers on the basis of "their length of service, very good record and range of experience," and the state appoints one of the three.