POLICE MATTERS: Bihar Assembly Speaker Uday Narain Chaudhary lighting a traditional lamp to open a workshop on police reforms in Kannur on Monday.

KANNUR: The Supreme Court directives on police reforms in its judgment in 2006 has given an impetus to the demand for making the police force an efficiently functioning law enforcement agency, according to participants in a workshop on reforming the police force.

The workshop on `People's campaigning for the better policing in Kerala' organised here on Monday by the Mass Initiative for Non-violence and Democracy (MIND) in association with the Delhi-based Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and Ekta Parishad saw most of the participants voicing their views that the Supreme Court directives such as constitution of the State Security Commission in each State, bifurcation of the force into investigating and law and order wings and setting up of an independent Police Complaints Authority in State and district levels would professionalise the force and free it from political control.

Bihar Assembly Speaker Uday Narain Chaudhary, who inaugurated the workshop, however, expressed reservation about making the police force independent of the Government. Emphasising his point that no agency, including the police, should be allowed to encroach on the people's fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, he said that the people of different parts of the country were still not aware of the democratic system.

Calling on the police to sensitise themselves to the issues of human rights, Mr. Chaudhary said that it would be practically difficult to implement the Supreme Court directives.

District Superintendent of Police Mathew Polycarp said that the police force was in a dilemma between the excess and inaction.

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