Guns and status vip security cover is a system that’s lost its moorings from professional threat assessment

Guns and status vip security cover is a system that’s lost its moorings from professional threat assessment

The murder of singer and Punjab Congress politician Sidhu Moose Wala a day after the state’s AAP government reduced his security cover raises several questions about VIP protection in this country. That Moose Wala’s security cover was scaled down may have been a police decision that followed AAP’s stated goal of rationalising VIP security. What was strange was AAP’s Twitter handle identifying Moose Wala as one of those with scaled down protection. This needs to be investigated – because it possibly made the singer-politician vulnerable. Whether the Punjab government’s judicial commission will get to the truth is a good question.

Even more important questions, which need to be asked despite all the media frenzy over Moose Wala’s death, are about the system that decides who gets what level of security and what strain this puts on policing, which suffers from personnel inadequacy to begin with. Especially at state levels, security covers are often political favours bestowed on those in or close to power – gun-toting cops are another status symbol in our hierarchy-obsessed politics. And just as real assessment of threat is not done while granting a security cover, often it isn’t done while reducing or withdrawing the cover. Politics influences both decisions. The result is a VIP security culture that perhaps has no parallel in any other democracy.

As per data from the Bureau of Police Research and Development, more than 66,000 police personnel were providing protection to more than 19,000 ministers, MPs, MLAs, judges, bureaucrats and others in 2019, in the Centre and states. The bulk of this ‘protection force’ is drawn from state police ranks. Even more revealingly, none of the top three states in this list – Bengal, Punjab and Bihar – are suffering from entrenched insurgencies or violent movements. Look at this data: Bengal had more than 3,000 VIPs under protection and Punjab, more than 2,500, but Maoist-hit Chhattisgarh had only 315 people under security cover. Remember, in this context, that almost the entire Chhattisgarh Congress leadership was wiped out in the 2013 Jhiram Ghati massacre by Maoists.

India has 155.78 police personnel per lakh population, against the UN recommended standard of 222 cops per lakh. Overworked cops are a daily danger sign that goes unnoticed. There’s also a serious skew in distribution, with many parts of non-urban India being seriously under-policed. Of course, protection is essential for a number of public figures. Equally, no political party will want to review a system that’s gone haywire but that suits them so well.