IGP ‘dismayed’ over reform proposals

Writes letter to CM, saying two of them had not gone through the competent committee

LAHORE: In a letter written to the chief minister, Punjab Inspector General of Police Arif Nawaz Khan has expressed some serious concern over the processing of two proposals called “Police Reforms” and “Good Governance Law - New Civil Administration Structure for Effective and Efficient Delivery of Public Services”. He warned against handing over too many administrative powers to the DC.

The IGP wrote he had been informed that the same had been presented to the Prime Minister Imran Khan prior to his departure to Saudi Arabia last week. “I was also informed that the Honourable Prime Minister had verbally approved the proposals and directed that the same be implemented through legislative and administrative means by 30 September, 2019.”

Nawaz said he was dismayed to learn that both had been processed without having been considered by the Committee on Police Reforms. He said due to the lack of correct input and consultation, the proposals, as presented to the PM, were “fraught with many pitfalls”.

He said biggest of them all is that this knee-jerk action will nullify the Government’s positive image created by the good work done by the present government in granting operational and administrative autonomy to police in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

“If implemented, these one-sided proposals will reduce the police in the Punjab to a degree of bureaucratic subjugation that does not find a parallel even in the Colonial administration of pre-partition India,” he stressed.

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He pointed out that the presentations make the cardinal mistake of concentrating unprecedented powers in the office of the deputy commissioner, especially related to policing and general law and order. This goes against the universally acknowledged principles of functional autonomy, specialisation of police functions and unity of command.  “Even the powers granted to the judiciary, under the constitutional mandate of separation of executive and judiciary, have been proposed to be granted to the deputy commissioner. Similarly, purely police functions like investigation, arrest, search and seizure etc. have been proposed to be regulated through the Home Department. “

He elaborated that this clearly falls afoul of the constitutional and legal mandate of having fair investigations and trials unaffected by outside interference. He added this requirement has been taken as sacrosanct even by the courts who have declared on countless occasions that even they cannot interfere in the investigation of cases.

“The restoration of a hackneyed and outdated system of district magistrate in the garb of civil service reform is a thinly veiled attempt at concentration of power in an office - the so called ‘one window troubleshooter’ - that has already failed miserably in areas where it has been mandated to act.”  He said the critically suboptimal performance of the ‘one-window troubleshooter’, especially in the areas of revenue, health and education, immediately sprung to mind in the backdrop of recent numerous deaths because of failure to control dengue epidemic. “The proposal for establishment of a separate police force under the DC is also fraught with risks including undermining the writ of the state and duality of police command, through separate forces in the same areas of jurisdiction.

He said that in a situation where even the existing police force has been deprived of many of its genuine financial requirements due to the limited fiscal space, fulfilling financial requirements of a new police force would be an uphill task. Questions of training, efficiency, discipline and promotion also come to mind in this case, the police chief added.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2019.