Will someone tell the cops who the Boss is

For, before Gill, the city police were already confused. Hardly had Deputy Commissioners come to terms with Inspector Generals (IGs) put over their heads as in-charge of their jurisdiction when Director General of Police K. Chakravarthi came and sat in Ahmedabad police commissioner P C Pande’s chair.

Who reports to whom is now a problem given that some IGs can be issued orders only by the DGP while DCPs are taking orders from the DG, the Police Commissioner and the IGs.

Add to this Gill and his men. ‘‘Gill’s role is not yet clearly defined so we do not know how the Punjab Police will function if it arrives and who will command it. No one has any idea about that,’’ says Additional Commissioner, Sector I, Keshav Kumar.

Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Ashok Narayan says he has no official intimation of the Punjab Police coming here but if they are deployed, they will be under the State Government’s command. ‘‘K P S Gill has been appointed as adviser to the Chief Minister. He will do that,’’ says Narayan. Minister of State for Home Gordhan Zadaphia is more cryptic: ‘‘No, I do not know anything and I don’t want to say anything.’’ If things are confusing on the ground, in New Delhi, it’s not much clearer although officially, North Block is doing nothing to rub Chief Minister Narendra Modi the wrong way.

Most officials in the Home Ministry are tightlipped about Gill’s brief and his role. The DGP in Gujarat is not expected to work under the supercop, credited with having crushed militancy in Punjab, nor will he have access to all the files as a matter of course unless the C M wants him to see something particular, sources in the Home Ministry said.

If he has ideas on strengthening police operations somewhere or on deployment in a particular place, he will ‘‘advise’’ the C M accordingly. This would mean that Gill won’t instruct the police directly, he will have to go via Modi’s office. Even the Punjab battalion he has asked for won’t work directly under him, say Home Ministry sources.

The problems Gill is likely to face are not just the mobs on the rampage but also inherent in the situation. Local police officers, who have felt snubbed at his appointment, may make the right welcoming noises to begin with but will increasingly try and shift the blame onto him for things going wrong. His appointment is unprecedented and that is not just because the situation is extraordinary. There have been security advisors in the past to Governors and Ved Marwah and Gen Zaki held this position to governors in J and K and Gen J K Puri to Surendra Nath in Punjab.

They were appointed by the Union Home Ministry and enjoyed a rank equivalent to that of a Cabinet Minister in the state. But none of them was powerful. The real power was wielded by the governor or the person entrusted by him to deal with the security situation. There have also been instances of a security advisor to a CM like Jamil Quereshi to Farooq Abdullah in November 1986, but he was seen more as a tag-on to the CM. Gill is unlikely to play that role.

The situation about his rank and the salary he will draw still remains ‘‘fluid.’’