Cops caught in cadre war

Though Rokade is the first one to seek an alternative career, there are many who would like to follow him if only the right opportunity came their way.

And if there’s anybody responsible for the discontent, it’s the state govt. The government is required to review the postings of cadre and non-cadre officers every three years. However, since 1991, the government has not bothered to carry out a single review and in the process has also flouted a Supreme Court directive(K K Goswami case) to increase the number of SPS officers and correspondingly reduce the number of IPS officers in the state police department. On September 9, 1996, the Central Government had sent a communique to all the states seeking a complete report on their compliance with the SC order by October 8, 1996.

The govt is yet to respond.Officers of both SPS and IPS start their careers at the same level as Deputy Superintendents of Police (DSP) and Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) respectively. Though the designations are different, both the posts are of the same rank. However, while an IPS officer gets promoted to the post of superintendent of police (SP) in three years, his SPS counterpart has to wait for 18 years, sometimes longer, for his first promotion. According to service rules an SPS officer should be absorbed in the cadre within eight years of his joining the service.

“I cannot apply for government quota flats, neither I am eligible to travel by air, while those officers who are muchjunior to me can avail of all these perks. I ask why this injustice?” says an officer who has spent 17 years in the service waiting to be absorbed in the cadre.And that’s not all.

Since 1995 the state government has stopped appointing SPS officers as district superintendents (SPs). “If we were capable of handling districts earlier, what has happened to our capability now. Are we any less efficient than them (IPS officers),” asks another officer who has served 20 years.Symbolic gestures, though have been made to assuage the feeling of SPS officers. Like, a hosts of posts were created in the city recently and several of them were reserved for non-cadre officers. But when the time came to make the appointments preference once again was given to IPS officers.

The case of Ram Gawande, who retired as an officer of the rank of inspector general, sums up the frustrations of the SPS officers. Gawande along with some other non-cadre officers had fought a long battle to secure promotions to the Inspector Generalrank. However, Gawande’s promotion came only a day before his retirement. “On his first day in the office Gawande signed his pension papers,” says one of his colleagues.When contacted, the Director General of Police Arvind Inamdar said he was aware of the problem and would soon do something about it.