Police Establishment Boards are unnecessary if the fixed tenure of the DGP ensures his independence. Even under the 1861 Police Act, the internal administration of the police vests with the DGP, assisted by a hierarchy of officers. In a set-up organised along a chain of command, boards with multiple membership will delay decisions and hamper disciplinary control. Police complaints’ authorities seem a good innovation if they do not become star chambers. Even now some form of separation of investigation from law and order exists in the urban areas and at the state level. But the whole matter requires a thorough review to see how it can be deepened. An important consideration will be to ensure broadly equal and corresponding career prospects to personnel in the two wings.

Independent of any institutional reform, there is a more urgent need to improve the basic working conditions of the police. Grossly inadequate police-population ratios; inhumanly long working hours; poor physical working infrastructure; shoe-string budgets for working expenses; a pay structure which bears no rational relation to the powers and duties entrusted; and a cumbersome criminal justice system — all these factors have cumulatively contributed to the image of the Indian Police as an insensitive, high-handed and corrupt organisation.

The writer is a former governor of Tamil Nadu