Status symbol of VIPs on road
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: February 08, 2013 -
The logic is plain and simple. Why protection of VIPs should be an excuse for the ordinary citizens to feel insecure in moving around?
This is the question that the Supreme Court of India has raised when it rained down an order to all the State Governments to furnish in two days the details of how many police personnel in their States are assigned to the politicians.
In a landmark order on Thursday, February 7, 2013, the apex court has questioned the rationale behind providing security to the VIPs at the expense of ordinary citizens who are left unattended.
The apex court has also warned that if the State Governments do not file their respective affidavits till February 11 (that is by Monday next), the Home Secretaries concerned would have to appear before it on February 16.
The present case followed a petition filed by renowned lawyer Harish Salve who questioned why thousands of crores of rupees are being spent on VIP security unnecessarily when the same amount could have been used instead to make the National capital Delhi safer for women.
The petition has come in the wake of the December 16 gruesome gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student by six men in moving bus. The incident shook the nation and provokes widespread protest all over calling for a stringent new anti-rape law.
After hearing the response of Delhi police to the petition that it deploys thousands of personnel for the security of the judges and others, the Supreme Court retorted that most of these personnel could be deployed for better purposes including making the city roads safer for women to walk around.
Even if the present petition is related to the Delhi gang-rape incident, inadequate security for women is any part of the country has always remained a grave concern.
So, it is to the credit of the Supreme Court that the larger picture of the problem of security for women in other parts of the country has not been missed out from the purview of its order, and directed all the State Governments to file affidavits on deployment of policemen for VIP security.
As we have pointed out through this column on earlier occasions, security mania among the puffed up politicians and bureaucrats who considered placing themselves under security cover as a status symbol is becoming really obnoxious.
And Manipur has been no exception to this craze for security cover.
The immediate reaction of most politicians and bureaucrats over any fancied threat to their personal safety is to clamour for increased security and people in power readily oblige the request without any proper investigation or verification over the genuineness of the 'threats'.
But the sad thing is that increased security cover to VIPs is not only at the expense of taxpayer's money but also at the cost of security of common men and women on the streets, where the 'status symbol' of VIPs is best demonstrated through assertion of right to passage, thereby blocking the traffic and causing inconveniences to the public.
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