The Association of Retired IGPs said that the Punjab government is finalizing a proposal for fitting a new framework to the existing design of the Criminal Justice System called the Inspectorate. Projected to be a component of the Home Department, the Inspectorate will be authorized to carry out inspections of police, forensics, public prosecutors, prisons, and directorate of probation and reclamation. The government has failed to practically implement, Police Order 2002, for de-politicizing the police and is now thinking of amending those segments of the law that are crucial in order to de-politicise the police.
We in the Association of Retired IGPs are wary of the proposals made by the government, and regret that valuable resources are being wasted in such regressive schemes, the retired IGP’s added.
The institutions in question already have substantial inspection capacities, they added, and their efficiency depends only on the system in which they are embedded. Unless the government improves its governance and stops intervening in the police matters for its political gains, police performance will not improve.
The IGPs further said that in its present form, the scheme raises justified concerns; apart from diluting the existing inspection capacities of the relevant organizations, the Inspectorate will further tighten the political grip on the police, aggravate the abuse of criminal justice process at the hands of the concerned politicians, thus, strengthening the existing nexus between politics and crime.
We would, therefore, call upon the Punjab government to perform its legal duty to fully implement the existing law, establish a politically independent Public Safety Commission, and to shelve the ill-advised scheme in its present form, the IGPs said.
