Police officers in Uttar Pradesh are more loyal towards the successive ruling dispensations than the Constitution, the Allahabad High Court observed recently. Justice Vinod Diwakar said the "feudal mindset of politicians and bureaucrats" in the state has long reduced constitutional governance to an instrument of personal dominion rather than public service. "The administrative machinery of the state has, over successive regimes, been susceptible to deep political penetration," the court said. It flagged transfers, postings, and promotions of officers in UP as instruments of political patronage rather than merit-based governance. "Officers perceived as loyalists are rewarded with preferred postings -- urban commissionerates, lucrative districts – while those demonstrating independence are transferred punitively to inconsequential assignments, a well-known fact," the bench in a judgment passed on June 3 said.
"The vertical loyalty of officers runs not toward the Constitution but toward the ruling dispensation. Field officers, acutely conscious of the transfer-posting economy, calibrate their conduct to satisfy political superiors. Encounter killings, selective crackdowns and targeted use of the Gangsters Act against inconvenient individuals have periodically attracted judicial notice," the court said. In a searing commentary on the police's functioning and rule of law in Uttar Pradesh, Justice Diwakar said, "A considerable section of the officer cadre treats the rule of law not as a constitutional obligation but as an operational inconvenience. Arrests are effected without due process. Many times, FIRs are registered or suppressed with ulterior motives, and preventive detention provisions are invoked arbitrarily, at the whims of officers."
He said that the procedural safeguards under the Code of Criminal Procedure, and now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, are routinely bypassed, and judicial orders are complied with in form but defeated in substance. The judge made the comments while dealing with a case filed by Rajendra Tyagi relating to the Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986. During the hearing of a petition filed by an accused booked under the anti-gangster law, the court took serious note of the misuse of police powers in the State. Since the Supreme Court is also considering the issues connected to the 1986 Act, Justice Diwakar refrained from giving any final verdict on the issues he noticed.
The court censured the home secretary and asked the government to independently evaluate the suitability and operational effectiveness of its officers in the department. "Certain officers who rose to the post of Home Secretary have in practice served as conduits for self-serving interests. Recommendations on postings, approvals of departmental proceedings, and responses to court proceedings have in such instances reflected considerations driven by personal or extrinsic calculations rather than dispassionate and constitutionally informed administrative judgment. This fundamentally compromises the institutional integrity that the position demands," the judge said.
He said that constitutional governance cannot be held hostage to individual expediency or convenience, and the state apparatus must remain answerable to the law and to the Constitution, not to any ruling establishment. The court cited a raid carried out in Bikru village to target now-deceased gangster Vikas Dubey to illustrate the impunity with which police operate in Uttar Pradesh. It noted that the officer responsible for overseeing the Bikru operation, in which eight police personnel, including a deputy superintendent-rank officer, were killed, received only a formal caution.
The court said it finds it difficult to reconcile such a "disproportionately lenient outcome" with the gravity of the supervisory failure involved. It said that it is precisely this culture of "institutional impunity" that emboldens those in authority to remain unaccountable, perpetuating the feudal and politically patronised administrative ecosystem.