In what can be seen as a key observation, Allahabad High Court recently said that police officers in Uttar Pradesh (UP) are more loyal towards the ruling dispensation than the Constitution. It said the officers act to satisfy their political superiors.
In a judgment highly critical of the functioning of UP police, Justice Vinod Diwakar said that Uttar Pradesh’s "feudal mindset of politicians and bureaucrats” has long reduced constitutional governance to an instrument of personal dominion rather than public service.The administrative machinery of the State has, over successive regimes, been susceptible to deep political penetration, the Court said. It flagged that transfers, postings, and promotions of officers in UP are instruments of political patronage rather than merit-based governance.
Officers perceived as loyalists are rewarded with preferred postings - urban commissionerates, lucrative districts - while those demonstrating independence are transferred punitively to inconsequential assignments, a well-known fact, the Bench said.“The vertical loyalty of officers runs not toward the Constitution but toward the ruling dispensation. Field officers, acutely conscious of the transfer-posting economy, calibrate their conduct to satisfy political superiors. Encounter killings, selective crackdowns, and targeted use of the Gangsters Act against inconvenient individuals have periodically attracted judicial notice,” the Court added.
In a searing commentary on Uttar Pradesh’s police functioning and rule of law in Uttar Pradesh, Justice Diwakar said:"A considerable section of the officer cadre treats the rule of law not as a constitutional obligation but as an operational inconvenience. Arrests are effected without due process, many times FIRs are registered or suppressed with ulterior motives, and preventive detention provisions are invoked arbitrarily, at the whims of officers. The procedural safeguards under the Code of Criminal Procedure, and now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, are routinely bypassed. Judicial orders are complied with in form but defeated in substance.”
The Court made these comments while dealing with a case relating to Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986. During the hearing of a petition filed by an accused booked under the anti-gangster law, the Court took serious note of the misuse of police powers in the State.
Since the Supreme Court is also considering the issues connected to the 1986 Act, Justice Diwakar refrained from giving any final verdict on the issues noticed by it. However, the Court went on to highlight various failings of the Uttar Pradesh police. It censured the State Home Secretary and asked the government to independently evaluate the suitability and operational effectiveness of its officers in the department.Constitutional governance cannot be held hostage to individual expediency or an individual’s convenience, and the State apparatus must remain answerable to the law and to the Constitution of India, not to any ruling establishment, the Court said.
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