UP cops more loyal to governing party than Constitution, says Allahabad HC

PRAYAGRAJ: The Allahabad high court remarked that police officers in Uttar Pradesh appear to be more loyal to the ruling dispensation than to the Constitution. Stressing that constitutional governance cannot be held hostage to individual convenience or expediency, the court said the state machinery must remain accountable to the law and the Constitution rather than to any political establishment in power.

In a June 3 judgment, Justice Vinod Diwakar said that Uttar Pradesh’s “feudal mindset of politicians and bureaucrats” 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 that transfers, postings, and promotions of officers in UP are 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 said.

“The vertical loyalty of officers runs not toward the Constitution but towards 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 added.

“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. The procedural safeguards under the Code of Criminal Procedure, and now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, are routinely bypassed. Judicial orders are complied with in form but defeated in substance,” Justice Diwakar said.

The court made these comments while dealing with a case filed by Ghaziabad resident Rajendra Tyagi relating to the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986.

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 noticed by it.

It censured the state home secretary and asked the govt to independently evaluate the suitability and operational effectiveness of its officers in the department.