Yogi intervenes to avoid probable faceoff between IAS and IPS lobby

Recently, Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Durga Shankar Mishra had rolled out a new guideline regarding review of development and law and order in Uttar Pradesh.

As per the guidelines, district magistrates (DMs) were to review the law and order in 68 of the total 75 districts with no active participation or value input from IPS officers controlling law and order in the district.

However, in the remaining seven districts of Agra, Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Noida, Prayagraj and Varanasi, police commissioners were to do the needful.

This order is said to have irked IPS officers, who approached chief minister and convinced him to revoke the order.

The order was repealed immediately and new order with revised conditions was issued. The new order states that DM would preside over the monthly law and order meetings and the SSP/SP, Additional DM, Additional SP, Deputy SP, senior prosecution officer, district government counsel and all station house officers (SHOs) would join those meetings.

Sources said that the top brass of police took this as an act of one-upmanship of IAS lobby. Top officials met chief minister Yogi Adityanath personally and requested for change in the order. Yogi obliged them by taking immediate action.

“How can SP or SSP be ignored when directly controls the law and order situation in district? If anything goes wrong, he is made accountable. He should be then given value also,” argues a senior police official.

On the other hand, IAS officers say that under the dual system of police administration in the colonial era Police Act, the district collector is overall in-charge while the SP reports to him/her.

“I don't know why there is fuss. In all probability, DM is more senior than SSP/SP in service. He is accountable for the overall ‘health' of the district. If anything goes wrong, political dispensation pulls the DM up. So why there is such arguments. This is no show-off of power,” said a senior IAS officer who requested anonymity.

This happened in UP earlier also

In Uttar Pradesh there has been such ‘skirmishes' between IAS and IPS earlier also. In 2017, Arvind Kumar (now retired), while serving as the principal secretary (home), issued an order dated May 9, 2017, making it mandatory for SSPs to take written permission from the district magistrate before transferring any policemen in the concerned district.

As the fall out of that order, then Ghaziabad district magistrate Ritu Maheshwari shot off a letter to then senior superintendent of police Vaibhav Krishna warning him of serious action for his failure to secure necessary approvals. Krishna had transferred three station house officers (SHOs) allegedly without her permission.

Krishna took offence and not only responded to it by raising objections but also apprised his seniors on what transpired. He even put a request with the Uttar Pradesh DGP and principal home secretary, seeking his own transfer from the district for the sake of better administration.

Later, then DGP Sulkhan Singh took up the matter with the CM after which the order was recalled.