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Police, people and politicians

By N. R. Madhava Menon

Political interference in the functioning of the police is the single most important factor for lack of performance and accountability of this visible arm of the civilised state.

THE KERALA Government has embarked upon a long-awaited police policy aimed at insulating law enforcement from political interference and to let the police act as a professional force accountable to the laws and the Constitution. Despite repeated threats and criticism from political leaders of the ruling coalition as well as of the Opposition, the Chief Minister, A. K. Antony, has reportedly desisted from using the police as a stooge of the party in power.

In the last five decades and more, the story was quite different. Transfers and postings were used conveniently to break the back of honest officers and to reward pliable and corrupt officers who used their powers to selectively advance the interests of politicians and parties. The police were not only politicised and corrupted; casteism, communalism and lawlessness were injected into the rank and file. The authority of the DGP was steadily eroded. Performance standards were diluted and the entire force was thoroughly demoralised not knowing how to react. One consequence of the above policy has been police inaction in serious situations or reaction depending upon which side commanded more money and influence! In the process, the law-abiding public suffered the most. The weaker sections including women and children had to suffer silently and had to seek the help of courts and the media to ventilate their grievances. At one point of time during the regime of the previous Government, the largest single category of petitions in the Kerala High Court used to be against police lawlessness or seeking directions to the police to provide protection against victimisation by other lawless elements! In a recent conference on police reforms in Delhi, a senior police officer publicly declared, on information given to him by the Kerala DGP, that in postings and transfers in the State police, the authority of the latter was totally restored! He said the threat now was from the disgruntled elements within the police who maintained liaisons secretly with their erstwhile political masters and did their bidding surreptitiously. He hoped that if the Chief Minister succeeded in upholding the policy of non-interference in police functioning, the DGP would be able to arrest the decline and bring back professionalism in the force for better serving the interests of the people. Will the Kerala politicians allow that to happen?

Police reform is critical now, more than ever before. Terrorism and organised crime have emerged in different parts of the country threatening the very foundations of the rule of law and constitutional governance. Elsewhere, the police are getting communalised and divided on narrow sectarian lines undermining social harmony and national integrity. Further, the cancer of corruption is eating into the organisation to such an extent that constitutional governance is jeopardised and human rights violated. Admittedly, political interference in the functioning of the police is the single most important factor for lack of performance and accountability of this visible arm of the civilised state.

The Police Act of 1861 does give the political Executive the power of "superintendence" of police working. Obviously, this was intended to ensure that the police conducted themselves according to the laws of the country. In the colonial era, the foreign Government interpreted this power in such a way as to shift police loyalty from the rule of law to the rulers themselves. This approach was found convenient later by the so-called people's representatives to get their dirty job done by the police with little or no accountability and in complete disregard of the demands of justice. This explains why in India today, Governments have a strong presence in every aspect of life of the people, law or no law.

Superintendence, in the name of democracy, has become a licence for politicians to interfere in investigation of crimes (over which even courts have very little powers), in posting and transfer of policemen and in pressuring the police to act in partisan ways. It is perfectly legitimate for the Home Minister to seek information on the status of investigation of any important case as he is obliged to answer questions in the Legislature. But if Ministers were to ask for case diaries of investigating officers or tamper with evidence and witnesses, the credibility of the justice system will disappear and miscarriage of justice will result. What is being attempted in Kerala, if one understands correctly, is to let the police do their lawful job and make them accountable if they fail either in terms of worsening of "law and order" or in terms of apprehending criminals and prosecuting crimes.

The police are supposed to be a disciplined force trained to uphold the law and to enable democratic institutions to function on constitutional lines. In this sense, they ought to enjoy as much independence as the Judiciary itself. Police powers are circumscribed by the provisions of the Constitution, the Police Act, the Criminal Procedure Code, the Evidence Act and a host of special and local laws which put restrictions on the scope and method of exercise of that power. If they violate it, the Executive can proceed against them and punish them administratively. Courts have powers to extract accountability from the police in case of violations of human rights in exercising their functions. Above all, the media, the Lok Ayuktas, the human rights commissions and superiors within the police organisation oversee police conduct and proceed to deal with police excesses. In the circumstances, there is neither logic nor justification for petty politicians to go about giving oral orders and abusing the police, claiming the so-called authority of elected representatives which the law does not confer on them. In the process, the delicate command and control structure essential for police efficiency is destroyed. The Kerala experiment is a test case in this regard and if it succeeds it will be a lesson for the rest of the country and a major breakthrough in what was so far considered an intractable issue in governance.

The Kerala Chief Minister could have avoided much of the criticism thrown at him had he set up the State Security Commission which the National Police Commission recommended long ago. This is to be a body of select public men of known integrity, including those from Opposition parties, presided over by the Chief Minister, to look into policy matters and address issues of popular dissatisfaction involving the police. He could have provided a real chance to the police to turn more professional had he adopted some amendments to the Police Act defining the scope of Executive superintendence over police and identifying the indicators to assess police performance and accountability. He should have incorporated a fair, transparent and efficient complaint redress machinery to process grievances against the police and demanded from the DGP periodical reports on police accountability.

Society cannot allow the police any more to drift with less and less accountability because of the present and grave danger this poses to democratic survival and human rights. As such, statesmen among the political crowd should rise above narrow sectarian interests and read the writing on the wall before it is too late. If enlightened sections among political parties, civil society and the media support the step and allow the system to function exposing the evil designs of corrupt politicians, the Government might develop the political will to take follow-up steps to complete police reform as recommended by the National Police Commission. If and when that happens, Kerala will be a better place to live in and the whole country will be compelled to follow its example for the success of democracy and constitutional values.

(The writer is Vice-Chancellor, WB National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata).

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