Annual police meet
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: November 29, 2014 -

The stage has been set for a grand gathering of all the top-brasses of the country’s policing agencies.

For the first time, the annual police meet would be held at Guwahati, Assam outside the national capital on November 29-30. DGPs and IGPs of all States, Union Territories and Central police organisations would attend the conference.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh would address the opening day of the conference while none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi would grace the second and closing day.

Some of the primary agenda listed for the annual conference include North East insurgency connected with ethnicity, ULFA, NDFB, militancy connected with jihad and left wing extremism.

National security and its connected issues, modernisation of police force to cope with challenges, illegal arms dealings, human trafficking, narcotics and improvement of police-public relations constitute the broad theme of the gathering.

What is rather interesting is the choice of Guwahati as the host city for the annual conference in complete deviation from the earlier practices of confining the gathering at New Delhi.

Assam and for that matter the whole North East region are host to a score of insurgent groups, and most of the Northeastern States have been imperiled in varying degrees by smuggling of drugs, human trafficking and illegal arms dealings.

The whole region has a fair degree of experience about all the agenda listed for the annual gathering.

Now the big question is. Can the annual conference chalk out a comprehensive strategy or policy which can effectively address some of these common agenda which are closely inter-woven?

Improvement of police-public relations cannot be achieved in isolation from counter-insurgency measures.

The modes of counter-insurgency measures adopted by security forces are central to determining the police-public relations.

Again, success or failures of counter-insurgency measures greatly depend upon how cordial or trust worthy are the police-public relations.

Frankly we are quite surprised over the conspicuous absence of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and human right issues in the agenda listed so far.

People of the region particularly Manipur, Assam and Nagaland had/have bitter experiences of the infamous Act.

Ninety-nine benevolent deeds done by security forces get undone by a single act of human rights violation committed under cover of the impunity guaranteed by AFSPA.

Indeed security forces or paramilitary forces have been executing many military civic action programmes for the welfare of civilian population but public memory is still fresh with the brutal gang-rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama.

The Supreme Court appointed Justice Santosh Hegde Commission which enquired into 13 fake encounter killings by armed forces and police in Manipur found that all the 13 killings were clear cases of fake encounters.

The 13 cases were randomly picked up from amongst 1528 cases of alleged extra-judicial killings listed in a PIL filed by the Extra-Judicial Execution Victims Families Association of Manipur (EEVFAM) and the Human Rights Alert, Manipur.

The fundamental contention of EEVFAM and HRA is that AFSPA is being used by security forces as a shield which ordinary criminal laws find difficult to penetrate.

All these aspects and critiques on AFSPA should be taken into consideration at least in the context of Manipur if the police-public relation must improve.

The incumbent Central Government has shown its ingenuity by bringing the annual police meet from its permanent host (Delhi) to Guwahati.

This time the conference can prove to be something more than a routine gathering if the top honchos of policing and security agencies can work out a strategy which can differentiate policing from militarization.

This is important and quite necessary for the North East, if not for the whole country.