M A I N   N E W S

4 transfers a day in Punjab!
‘Inconvenient’ officers being elbowed out
Prabhjot Singh
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 14
Shuffling officers at a breakneck speed, the Punjab Government has created a new record by ordering 500 transfers and 42 promotions in the Police Department in the past 125 days, elbowing out in the process some of the most competent but what it considers to be “inconvenient” officers.

The government’s claim that transfers were necessary to give a “clean, transparent and good image” to the new administrative setup notwithstanding, many an eyebrow is being raised over the pace and frequency with which transfers are being ordered. It works out at four transfers a day, meaning thereby that every six hours an officer of the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police or above is being shuffled out from his or her previous position.

Loyalty to “a coterie” running the state administration is perhaps the only criterion for continuity and acquiring key positions in the department, according to sources monitoring the goings-on.

Intriguingly some of the officers, held in high esteem by the top echelons of political power of the state, are being marginalised and relegated to inconsequential positions.

Soon after Chief Minister Amarinder Singh took over, the Director-General of Police was changed and Mr M.S. Bhullar was brought here from the PAP, Jalandhar, to head the state police.

The first major reshuffle was ordered on March 4 when 52 officers were shifted. It was followed by another major reshuffle on March 11 when 79 officers were shifted. The third, which saw the shifting of 51 officers, was ordered on April 4, followed by the transfer of 149 DSPs on April 8. After three months, wholesale transfers were witnessed again between July 11 and 12 in which 94 officers were given new postings. To date, all unit heads — vigilance, intelligence, security, prisons, Home Guards, internal vigilance and administration — have been changed twice in the past five months. So are most of the district police chiefs, range DIGs and others.

Interestingly, promotions in the Police Department is the only subject which has witnessed continuity from the previous SAD-BJP Government. While promotions, quoting financial crunch, are being withheld in all other administrative departments, the police has been witnessing almost two promotions a week. Besides promoting one DGP and five ADGPs, it has promoted several DIGs, mostly on current-duty charge, and SPs. While in most of the states, those recruited DSPs in 1985 continue to be in the same position, those in Punjab are now adorning the rank of DIG.

The entire 1991 batch of the IPS, perhaps one of the biggest with 17 officers belonging to the Punjab cadre, is now on the current-duty charge of DIG.

The frequent transfers, coupled with promotions, have been in contradiction to the transfer policy of the state approved by the new government in April. Many senior functionaries have been shifted more than three times in less than four months. They include district police chiefs, range DIGs and even those heading different, though important, cells of the Police Department. These cells include the intelligence wing, the Vigilance Bureau and the Internal Vigilance.

Interestingly, the Internal Vigilance cell, which had functioned well when Mr Jarnail Singh Chahal was its chief some years ago is dysfunctional now. In the latest reshuffle, Mr Bakshi Ram has been promoted and appointed ADGP, Internal Vigilance cell. The next senior-most officer in the cell may at best be an SP or a DSP. Until his elevation, some other ADGP held the additional charge of this wing.

One of the reasons given for the latest reshuffle was that the Council of Ministers, acting on information of the Intelligence, agreed to revive all 18 posts of SP due to a perceptible threat of terrorism from the ISI. If this was the basis for the recent promotion of 18 SPs, then precious little has been done to strengthen either Intelligence of counter-intelligence wings. Some of the key positions in these two important arms of the state administration are vacant. For example, the post of SP, JIC (Amritsar) or SP Counter-Intelligence, Amritsar, have been lying vacant. So is the post of SP (CID) here.