By Bar & Bench
The Allahabad High Court recently observed that police officers in Uttar Pradesh (UP) are more loyal towards the ruling dispensation than the Constitution [Rajendra Tyagi And 2 Others Vs. State Of U.P. And Another].
In a judgment highly critical of the functioning of UP police, 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 toward 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.
The vertical loyalty of officers runs not toward the Constitution but toward the ruling dispensation. Field officers, acutely conscious of the transfer-posting economy, calibrate their conduct to satisfy political superiors.Allahabad High Court.
In a searing commentary on Uttar Pradesh’s police functioning and rule of law in Uttar Pradesh, Justice Diwakar said:”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.”.
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