NEW DELHI: Is Delhi Police developing a new bonhomie with the AAP government? Looks like this!
After a long feud, the city police under the leadership of its new commissioner Alok Kumar Verma, has asked all the deputy commissioners to meet local legislators every month and discuss the law and order-related issues.
Verma, in a letter, has directed that “all district DCPs will hold meeting with the MLAs of their respective areas and address the issues raised by them.”
He also asked the deputy commissioners to keep the minutes of such meetings and send them to his office. “A copy should be marked invariably to the office of the Lieutenant Governor,” the letter stated.
This is quite significant, because in the past, the police often got into war of words with the state government. The police registered criminal cases against 27 AAP legislators and arrested five of them in the last one year. On January 29, MLA Mahendra Yadav was arrested on charges of rioting and assaulting a public servant.
The relationship between the government and the police soured with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal calling the cops ‘thulla’. The CM’s major bone of contention has been the fact that the Delhi Police is controlled by the Centre.
In the past, Kejriwal had also called top police officers “agents” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “In Delhi Police, the lower rung officers are very brave. Those in high profiles have become the agents of BJP and Modi,” Kejriwal had said, lashing out at the then Commissioner BS Bassi. In reply, Bassi, who retired last month, too attacked Kejriwal on various issues.