Friday, October 30, 2015

THE MINISTER VS OFFICER



THE MINISTER VS OFFICER

The spat that occurred in public between the Haryana Health minister Anil Vij and the lady IPS officer Sangeeta Kalia has generated considerable debate.  Most people have come out in support of the police officer.

There is no doubt that the Minister was boorish in his behavior.  He had no right to ask the officer to “get out” of a meeting, where the performance of the district police in dealing with sale of spurious liquour was being questioned.  Another mistake committed by the minister was to talk harshly to the officer not only in public but also in the presence of subordinate staff of the district police, thereby corroding her authority.  The earlier generation of politicians would always talk to officers in private whenever they felt like giving them a piece of their mind. Times have changed.  Politicians have become loud mouthed and arrogant in their behavior.

However, the police officer’s behavior was equally truculent and confrontational.  She showed her immaturity by unnecessarily arguing with the minister, who, after all is a people’s representative and had every right to listen to a public grievance.  Allegations in the form of a complaint had been made by a NGO that the police were not doing enough to prevent the sale of spurious liquor. Instead of asking the NGO why they had brought the complaint before the Minister, she should have tried to listen and explain to them what the police were doing in that regard.  Instead of doing that, she tried to prove the minister wrong and indirectly blamed the government’s policies.

Sale of spurious liquour is an important concern not only of the public but also of every state government.  There have been many incidents in different states, where sale of counterfeit liquor has caused deaths and police have been found to be complicit in allowing the sale. It is the state governments which have been asked to explain such incidents in the legislative assemblies.

Every state police act vests the superintendence over the police in the state government.  Section 24 of the Haryana Police Act of 2007 also does that.  Further, though Section 32 of this Act vests the administration of the state police in the DGP and of the police in a district in the District SP, the proviso to this Section allows the State Government to “intervene in the exercise of the powers of administration” by the police officers “in accordance with the prescribed rules, regulations or in exceptional circumstances involving urgent public interest”. The Minister as a part of state government had the authority   to exercise superintendence over the police and ask the head of the district police to explain their performance in an area of immense public interest. No illegitimate order or instructions were being given by him.

The state government did what all state governments do in such cases- transfer the officer. It was puerile on the part of state government’s representative to explain the transfer as a routine administrative decision.  The transfer was nothing but a slap on the wrist, warning the officer to behave.

The Congress lost no time in slamming the state government over the transfer, forgetting the number of times they had transferred an IAS officer called Khemka over much flimsier excuses.  Transfer and suspension are two weapons used by the politicians to punish such officers.

The opposition also attempted to turn the incident into a gender issue, which it was not.  Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that the minister should have maintained decorum while speaking to a lady officer.  The Congress leader Manish Tewari said the minister acted in a “crude manner” because “you don’t behave with a lady in this manner.”  The Congress spokesperson Shobha Oja went a step further, saying it reflected the “anti women mindset” of the BJP dispensation.  Actually, gender had nothing to do with it. The minister’s behavior would have been wrong even if it had been directed against a male police officer.

Attempts were made by other opposition parties to politicise the incident. The INLD took out a protest march in Fatehabad and burnt the effigy of the minister. A student organization organized a march in Bhiwandi, raising slogans in support of the officer.  The National Commission for Scheduled Castes also jumped in the fray, seeking a report on the incident from Haryana Government to decide if the Minister’s behavior amounted to an atrocity, as defined in the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

This tendency to politicise such incidents reflects on our inability or unwillingness to analyse the relationship between political leaders and police officers on an objective basis. Since we generally have a poor opinion of most politicians, we tend to look at whatever they do with suspicion.  This is not healthy in a democratic society, where the relationship between political leaders and police officers must be based on trust. Such relationship cannot be established if we start questioning political control or intervention in all situations involving the police, irrespective of whether the interference was legitimate or not.


This article was published in the Indian Express dated December 3, 2015