BHOPAL: The police headquarters stung by the repeated allegations part is an ship against the police force in the state has made 8 move to assert itself The Director General of Police R.P. Sharma is learnt to have shot alee other government seeking restoration of powers of transfers and postings in the department to the police chief.

“The Director General of Police in Madhya Pradesh is for all practical purposes a titular head Of the department. His main job is as a senior IPS officer put it to prepare the budget of the police department and submit it to the government for approval. He had Virwally no role in effectively controlling the law and order machinery.

The state police had for some time been under constant attack from the people including their elected representatives. The op: position parties have accused the police force of behaving like an extension of the ruling party.

Two more recent instances are cited in support of this. Sometime back the BJP activists ransacked the “AIL India Radio and Doordarshan officers here and indulged in acts of vandalism in the two buildings for quite some time completely unlocked by the police personal who were present in large numbers.

The BJP men were protesting against the inadequate coverage by the government controlled electronic media to the BJP president’s ekta yatra.

Earlier this week the police made totally unwarranted and wanton lathi charge on the Youth Congress (I) workers who had assembled in large numbers in front of the Bhopal divisional commissioner’s office to demonstrate against the “anti-people” policies of the BJP govt and court arrest. The police action had started even while the Youth Congress (I) workers were getting into the MPSRTC buses specially requisitioned by the police to take them to the jail

In fact in the assembly sessions in the past one year no other department has So consistently been attacked by the members belonging to the ruling party included as the police department

The police chief it is said has been feeling handicapped in exercising an effective control over the force for want of powers to transfer and post them according to the contingencies he deemed fit According to the insiders a small coterie in Vallabh Bhawan the state secretariat has usurped the position of the police chief by virtue of its being close to the Chief Minister Sunderial Patwa.

Sharifa Principal Secretary Home said that Director General of Police had been given the powers of transfer and posting in the Naxalite infested areas of the state but for postings and transfers in other areas he would have to abide by the “discipline imposed upon him”

In a parallel development the Governor Kunwar Mahmood Ali Khan was said to be taking more than usual interest in the law and order affairs of the state. The Governor was reported to have made extensive inquiries from the Congress (I) delegation which met him on Wednesday to submit a memorandum regarding demotion of the dwellings of the poor in the name of removing encroach men is all over the state and the brutal lathi charge on the Youth Congress (I) workers in Bhopal. The delegation led by former home minister. Hazarilal Raghuvanshi had annexed to the memorandum the list of 140odd workers who were injured in the lathi charge. According to Serta Mishra a Youth Congress (I) activists and a member of the delegation the Governor asked for medical of hospital slips of all the injured. She said that they were supplying Photostats of the slips.

The Governor had put the state government to embarrassment by reportedly observing at the Governor’s conference in Delhi last month that the communal forces were raising their heads in the state.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 17, 1992