Politics whiff in cop 'deputations'

Kolkata: With 75 Kolkata Police personnel shunted to remote districts on Friday, the Mamata Banerjee government has indicated its haste to strip Kolkata Police of its century-and-a-half-old British-era regulations. While some read a latent political motive behind the large-scale transfers, the government has indicated it is well in its administrative - and legal ambit - to effect such transfers.
Though Kolkata Police and the West Bengal Police have been set up on the basis of some pre-Independence laws, it appears that the first West Bengal assembly, which sat for the first time on March 31, 1952, had eight days later passed a law called The West Bengal Police Act, 1952. This allowed the state to transfer any Kolkata Police personnel to a "general police district", or a state police personnel to Kolkata. This law replaced the West Bengal Police (Temporary Powers) Ordinance, 1951. The state, the law said, can do this in public interest. More than a decade later, in 1963, the state passed another law which empowered the state to decide on the service conditions of its police force.
The Apex court in a 1994 order also elaborated on a transfer of a public servant holding a sensitive and important post. Any such order, the state says, is made in public interest. To ascribe motive to it, however, isn't easy. The SC said, "Mere suspicion or likelihood of some prejudice to public interest is not enough and there must be strong unimpeachable evidence to prove definite substantial prejudice to public interest to make it a vitiating factor in an appropriate case unless it is justified on the ground of larger public interest and exigencies of administration. Such cases would be rare and this factor as a vitiating element must be accepted with great caution and circumspection."
But legalities do not explain the apparent haste with which the orders were passed.
While the state has the right to transfer the personnel, it still chose to use the word "deputation". while sending these personnel out of Kolkata. With the state police reeling under staff shortage (only 68,000 personnel against the 1.04 lakh sanctioned posts), it still created an ex-cadre post to accommodate a Kolkata Police assistant commissioner. Worse, with three different state police officers - ADG (law and order), DIG (administration) and Special IG (headquarters) - signing the transfer orders of Kolkata Police personnel, over whom they have no administrative jurisdiction, it leaves a gaping hole which can be exploited.
Divergent views have emerged in the aftermath of the transfer orders. The state police chiefs are visibly elated, but . This "Tollygunj to Tala" notion has to be broken, quipped one. The Kolkata Police personnel are circumspect. Hours after around 75 policemen of Kolkata Police - from the post of assistant commissioners to that of constables - were "deputed" to the districts, a debate has begun within the force on the necessity of such a move. Several of those deputed to the districts feel they are victims of vendetta politics where "following orders other than that of the satraps" will invite a transfer.
"Why were men from the Special Branch, along with southeast division officers who had been posted in Jadavpur and Kasba constituencies on polling day, targeted?" asked one. Some are contemplating moving the Central Administrative Tribunal. These men point to rule 97 (4) of the service rulebook that says: "Deputation can be effected only with the consent of the concerned employee as because he joined the department to render service in that department." Citing the RL Gupta vs Union of India SC ruling of 1988, they said that "merely because a deputationist gave consent, he could not be made to suffer."
But for the majority of the force - that always prided itself that they cannot be shifted out of Kolkata - the message is that the government means business.
"While there is no denying that a few of those officers had not done justice to their postings, the force's morale has indeed taken a beating," an officer said. What has perhaps riled the organization most is how the Anti Rowdy Squad - considered the backbone of the organization - has been left in the lurch with both its AC and OC transferred out. The seniors, however, pointed to the 29 shootings the city witnessed since 2015. "Was their performance above question? If Bengal Police cops can work with us in the added areas, why can't we go out to the districts?" shot back a senior officer at Lalbazar.The Mamata Banerjee government chose to do something which even the Left Front dithered. In the early 80s, two battalions of a Kolkata Armed Police deployed in Darjeeling during the GNLF agitation had to be sent back packing due to allegations against them. The state was initially decided to send them packing to remote districts but changed its mind. The Trinamool regime, however, has no such trappings.
(With inputs from Dwaipayan Ghosh)