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.

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.”

The Court made these comments while dealing with a case relating to Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986. During the hearing of a petition filed by an accused booked under the anti-gangster law, the Court took serious note of the misuse of police powers in the State.

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. However, the Court went on to highlight various failings of the Uttar Pradesh police. 

It censured the State Home Secretary and asked the government to independently evaluate the suitability and operational effectiveness of its officers in the department.

“Certain officers who rose to the post of Home Secretary have, in practice, served as conduits for self-serving interests. Recommendations on postings, approvals of departmental proceedings, and responses to court proceedings have, in such instances, reflected considerations driven by personal or extrinsic calculations rather than dispassionate and constitutionally informed administrative judgment. This fundamentally compromises the institutional integrity that the position demands," the Court said.

Constitutional governance cannot be held hostage to individual expediency or an individual’s convenience, and the State apparatus must remain answerable to the law and to the Constitution of India, not to any ruling establishment, the Court said.

The Court also cited the raid carried out the Bikru village to target now-deceased gangster Vikas Dubey to illustrate the impunity with which police officers operate in Uttar Pradesh. 

It noted that the officer responsible for overseeing the Bikru operation – in which eight police personnel, including a Deputy Superintendent of Police, were killed – received only a formal caution. 

“This Court finds it difficult to reconcile such a disproportionately lenient outcome with the gravity of the supervisory failure involved, and it is precisely this culture of institutional impunity that emboldens those in authority to remain unaccountable, perpetuating the feudal and politically patronised administrative ecosystem that this Court has adverted to hereinabove,” the Bench said.   

Advocate Ronak Chaturvedi appeared for the petitioners.

Additional Advocate General Anoop Trivedi with Additional Advocate General Paritosh Kumar Malviya appeared for the State.

Additional Government Paritosh Malviya also appeared in the matter.

[Read Judgment]