Politicians will never give up interfering in police affairs
Maharashtra deputy CM Ajit Pawar has clarified that his diktat to an IPS officer to stop work, reinforced with the threat of “action”, was not intended as interference. Seriously? Moving on from that ‘clarification’, netas intimidating police is an all-party, all-states thing.
Last month, an Andhra minister’s brother was in the news for slapping a cop who stopped him from entering a restricted area in a temple. In April, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah made a slap gesture at a police officer during a rally. Last year, a Congress legislator slapped a woman constable in Shimla, but had the rare experience of being paid back in kind.
The point, briefly, is that police that works under the executive’s thumb, just as it did during the Raj, cannot do its democratic duty. Kerala Police Reorganisation Committee stressed on this in 1959: “result of partisan interference is often reflected in lawless enforcement of laws, inferior service and in general decline of police prestige”.
Internal analyses in Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Delhi, etc, have come to the same conclusion over the years. A home ministry study in 1978 found: “People consider political interference with police as a greater evil than corruption.”
Yet, political interference with, and intimidation of, police have continued unabated. That’s because police represents corporeal power– the real deal, without which even courts are powerless. US president Andrew Jackson infamously defied his supreme court by saying, “(chief justice) John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”
The power to promote pliant officers, and transfer or suspend defiant ones, gives politicians the upper hand over police. While it is a democratic imperative, the want of safeguards to prevent abuse is the real problem. Political will to fix this is, unsurprisingly, lacking.
This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
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