With the Delhi elections imminent, political parties are in a frenzy, appealing to the diverse set of voters with varied promises – cash transfers for women and youth, reservation in jobs, and the caste census among many others. An analysis of the manifestos of the three major parties, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress reveals the lack of attention to an area crucial for the overall well-being of Delhi – the rule of law and access to justice.
Justice and rule of law are the cornerstones on which all socio-economic rights and development ideals are based. In the laundry list of demands typically made of governments: better education, healthcare, infrastructure, sanitation, etc. justice typically finds little mention. This lack of demand feeds supply. Manifestos, which are a public declaration of the party’s contract with the electorate, therefore, follow.
This year, while the BJP touches upon increasing police outposts, and ramping up the judiciary by simply customising its national manifesto for Delhi, it has avoided mentioning which government should have control over Delhi police. The Congress and the AAP have given issues related to justice services like police and the courts a complete miss, which alludes to the general apathy that has come to be internalised by us collectively. Nearly five years after the violence that tore through Delhi’s poorer communities, there is not even a murmur about police and policing in the election rhetoric.
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During the last decade, the political battle between the BJP-ruled Union government and the AAP-governed Delhi reached unprecedented depths, many of these played out in the Supreme Court. In May 2023, while the apex court finally upheld the Delhi government’s control over the bureaucracy, it also reaffirmed the Union government’s complete control over public order, land and police.
In every state, ‘pillars’ of the justice system – police, courts and legal aid, and prisons – come under the purview of the state government, but in Union Territories (UTs), there is a joint ownership system, where some justice services such as legal aid, prisons, and the subordinate judiciary are staffed and resourced by the UT’s government, while the police, inarguably the first interface of people with justice services, is under the complete control of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
While most UTs barring Jammu & Kashmir, have a population of a few lakh, Delhi’s population of over two crore makes it larger than nine states and equal to countries like Malayasia and Saudi Arabia. This high population burden makes control of police essential for any elected government. But Delhi’s unique position as the national capital has meant that the Centre has remained averse to the idea of giving up control of the police to the capital’s elected government. This creates a unique dichotomy for both the citizens of Delhi who cannot constitutionally hold their elected representatives accountable for law and order while the ruling political party at the Centre can easily influence the quality of policing by exercising its control over the strong police force.
Consistently, the national capital records the highest reported crime rate in the country, with 1,432 crimes (under IPC) per lakh population. Therefore, making Delhi ‘safe’ is often an auxiliary pre-poll assurance. Its operationalisation though, via creation of a roadmap for ensuring access to justice to its citizens, continues to be inadequate and capricious.
When it comes to the issue of crime and safety, the focus is first on the harbingers of public safety i.e. the police force. Compared to most other states and UTs, Delhi police is well-funded. The budgetary allocation for police in the city has been raised to Rs 12,259 crore for the upcoming fiscal year, which is one of the highest in the country.
This force, however, is currently not working on its full strength, with 15% of the positions vacant. On average, each Delhi police personnel caters to 300 people, but this figure is likely to increase significantly when considering the large section of Delhi police perpetually deployed for VIP protection.
Every police station covers 1.17 lakh people, almost a practical impossibility and this figure too would increase manifold in underprivileged neighbourhoods described as Paatallok or netherworld in an eponymously named popular web series set in Delhi.
Despite women’s safety being a pivotal function, all police stations in Delhi still don’t have dedicated women help desks. The share of women in the police is also an abysmal 14%. CCTV coverage in every police station has not been complied with by 12% of police stations. The high crime rate has also translated into arrests with 1.27 lakh arrests (under IPC) made by the police in 2022. The charge sheeting rate, however, hovers around merely 30% which raises serious questions about both frivolous arrests and the competence of the Delhi police. The process is the punishment is exemplified by Delhi’s prisons where over 90% inmates are undertrials.
The 2013 Nirbhaya rape and murder was a substantive factor that led to the emergence of the AAP as a political force in the national capital. It’s a tragic irony that more than a decade later, law and order and the safety of women is not even a pre-poll issue in Delhi.
Valay Singh and Sarab Lamba work with the India Justice Report.
