Political interference in posting of police officers may be well-known but in what is unusual even by those standards, Maharashtra Home Minister R R Patil’s office changed postings of 23 of 28 officers who were joining the force after completing their probation.
These changes not only overruled the recommendations of the Police Establishment Board (PEB), a high-level panel made of top state officers, many of them were also in violation of rules, information accessed by The Indian Express under the RTI Act shows.
The postings were for officers directly recruited as deputy superintendents of police in the Maharashtra Police Service. Like every year, the annual postings proposal of the PEB was sent to the Home Department for approval on July 14, 2011.
The proposals recommended postings for 28 officers who were to complete a 15-month probation that month, based on performance reviews, their place of probation and their hometowns. But Patil’s office changed the postings of 23 of those officers.
As per service rules, the PEB — which comprises the DGP, the Mumbai Police Commissioner and Additional DGPs for Law and Order and Establishment — posts officers outside the police range in which they have done their probation. In the changes made by the home minister’s office, four officers were placed in the same districts in which they had done their probation.
Five of the six officers posted to the Naxal districts of Gadchiroli, Gondhia and Chandrapur had their postings changed, to non-Naxal districts. Only three of those five positions were filled with other officers, including two who had been posted in the same district earlier during probation. This also meant Aheri in Gadchiroli got only one of the two DySPs posted by the PEB while Warora in Chandrapur did not get its new DySP.
There is dismay in official circles over such changes, with officers pointing out that first five years of service are critical as they define and mould the candidate.
During the initial years, the PEB generally tries to give each candidate a flavour of policing different regions and demographics of the state. The postings are also based on regions which are considered to be training grounds, along with the teaching capability of the superintendent of police of the range where the probationer has to take his or her first independent posting.
Each decision is backed by the weekly report of the officer during his or her 15 months’ probation, which comes after nine months’ training in the state police academy.
The names of the officers with probation history and corresponding remarks by the PEB are then sent to the Home Department for approval. It is only after the Home Minister approves that officers get the posting concerned.
