Appointment of police chiefs on their ideological leanings anti-national: Julio Ribeiro

Mumbai Police was a good force. It never failed to perform when properly led. Much depends on the leader, a wrong choice ensures downward slide.

JULIO RIBEIRO24 March, 2021

File photo of ex-Mumbai police chief Param Bir Singh | Twitter/@ANI






If politicians in power appoint honest and competent officers in leadership positions in the police forces across India, the security management would have been much better than what it is now. But if choices are made because of an officer’s willingness to go along with a party’s ideological commitments, communalism and injustice take a massive hop-step and jump. If the choice is based on money exchanged or to be exchanged in future, corruption and injustice take a similar trajectory. Both are harmful to the polity and to the country’s advancement. To my mind, both choices are anti-national.

The choice of police leaders rests with politicians in power. The National Police Commission and the Supreme Court had agreed that the choice of the DGP of a state and police commissioners of the big cities should be made by consensus or majority vote cast by the prime minister/chief minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of the Supreme/State High Court. That this wise advice is not being honoured by any government is a matter for public concern.

If Param Bir Singh had been appointed Mumbai’s Police Commissioner in this wise manner, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in opposition, would not have a leg to stand on when it complained of a high-end corruption demand, allegedly made by Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh. The home minister belongs to Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). In the division of portfolios between the three parties that constitute the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in my state, the NCP got the much sought after home portfolio.