The recent order by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for providing security cover to 77 MLAs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who were elected earlier this month after the West Bengal Assembly poll is not only unprecedented but appears politically motivated. It is rare for such a blanket order for deployment of forces to protect individuals to be issued. While 16 of these MLAs already have security cover of different levels, 61 of them will now be under the X-category umbrella .
In practice, decisions to provide security to persons under threat is taken by a committee in the MHA, which comprises officials from the Ministry, the Intelligence Bureau, Delhi Police and senior officials of the Central Armed Police Forces, that is, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the National Security Guard (NSG). While the Intelligence Bureau prepares the list of persons under threat and the degree of threat, the committee decides on the force to be deployed depending upon the place where the person is located. The deployment is done after the recommendations of the committee are approved by the competent authority. In these meetings, the threat perception of each of the person to be secured is discussed one by one and not collectively for any group as such.
A State subject
That the decision to deploy CAPF personnel for the 77 MLAs might have stemmed from political motivation can be inferred from the fact that the threat perception for each of the persons was not discussed.
In the past, such deployment of central forces for the protection of individuals was done in Punjab and in Jammu and Kashmir, when these regions were rocked by unrest. Since militants tried to sabotage the process of elections, poll candidates were generally targeted. The Central government, therefore, took blanket decisions to provide security to every candidate till the elections got over.
Law and order being a State subject, West Bengal is duty-bound to protect every citizen of the State, more so the MLAs. In the absence of the Central government’s decision to deploy CAPFs, the West Bengal government should have shouldered the responsibility. But by deploying central forces, the Centre has sent a clear signal that it does not rely upon the State government to provide fool-proof security to the BJP MLAs. This is hardly a healthy sign for Centre-State relations.
The Central government’s distrust of officers who are considered close to a State’s ruling dispensation does not bode well for police officers across the country. On the State governments devolves the onerous responsibility of maintaining law and order at all costs and it is their sacred duty to protect every MLA, irrespective of political affiliation.
The number of protected persons has increased in recent years to such an extent that in 2019, as many as 66,043 police and CAPF personnel were deployed to protect 19,467 Ministers, Members of Parliament, judges and bureaucrats, against the sanctioned strength of 43,556 personnel, as per the Data on Police Organisations. The Prime Minister has a strength of over 3,000 CAPF personnel on deputation to Special Protection Group (SPG) under the SPG Act, protecting him round the clock.
Constant deployment of CAPF personnel on protection duties impacts their training schedule. After the initial eight-week training for VIP protection, the personnel have to undergo a two-week refresher training periodically to hone their skills.
To curb the tendency of demanding security personnel around themselves, leaders and prominent persons should be asked to bear the expenditure, as is being done for an industrialist who pays ₹16 lakh per month for the security cover provided to him. Similarly, Members of Parliament and leaders with criminal records should be charged a fee for the security personnel deployed to protect them.
Having security cover has now become a status symbol and the growing clamour by people for personnel to escort them will be curbed to a large extent if they are made to pay for the security.
M.P. Nathanael is a retired Inspector-General of Police, CRPF
