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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Policing lessons from Panchkula -Roshan Kishore

Policing lessons from Panchkula -Roshan Kishore

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published Published on Aug 31, 2017   modified Modified on Aug 31, 2017
-Livemint.com

State’s response to organised violence in India often hinges on a political cost-benefit analysis

Days before the verdict in rape case against Dera Chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, his supporters started gathering in Panchkula. A lot of violence could have been prevented by not letting them come there. Why did the government allow this? The Dera is hardly a benign spiritual organisation. It holds significant political clout and openly declares support to political parties during elections. It supported the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014 assembly elections in Haryana. Was the BJP government reciprocating the favour? The answer is probably yes. To be sure, it is not the first instance of deliberate subversion of law and order machinery. Political gains from placating influential groups indulging in criminal actions often get the better of state’s commitment to uphold the rule of law in India.

Haryana saw large-scale rioting during the Jat reservation agitation in 2016. Agitators inflicted large-scale damage on both private and public property . They even looted firearms from police stations. A committee under Prakash Singh, former DGP of Uttar Pradesh looked into the role of Haryana police and administration during these protests.

The committee’s report explicitly says that shortage of adequate forces was not a problem. The report gives intriguing statistics of police action to substantiate its claims. Not even one person was injured in 11 instances of lathi-charge during the protests. In Rohtak district, which was the epicentre of protests, nobody died despite seven instances of police firing by the state police. Use of force was ineffective and token in nature, the report concludes. It also cites similar instances in other states—violence during funeral of Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh in Patna, Bihar and widespread rioting by a Muslim Mob in Azad Maidan, Mumbai—in 2012, where rioters were allowed a free hand as police action was lacking in effort due to political considerations.

Singh’s observations suggest that the state’s response to organised violence depends on relative political clout of perpetrators and sufferers.

A 2002 Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) paper by Steven Wilkinson, a professor of political science at Yale University, has similar findings. Wilkinson shows that party ideology or higher representation of minorities in cabinet and police did not have any correlation with incidents of Hindu-Muslim communal riots in Indian states between 1975 and 1995.

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Livemint.com, 31 August, 2017, http://www.livemint.com/Politics/YBfK0UJOiO08pjI87OxCpK/Policing-lessons-from-Panchkula.html


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