Delhi Police may get powers in court cases; will reduce role of government

NEW DELHI: The Centre is actively looking at making Delhi police commissioner the authority on filing an appeal in court cases and appointing public prosecutors in cases handled by Delhi cops. The move would reduce the role of the Delhi government, with which the Centre is already engaged in a constitutional standoff.

At present, the Delhi government’s home department has to be consulted by the Delhi Police before filing of an appeal or appointment of a prosecutor. The state government needs to give its opinion on whether a case is fit for appeal or not, and only then it is processed for further orders of Lieutenant-Governor, said officials familiar with the mechanism.

For central agencies such as CBI and NIA, they are allowed to propose the names of public prosecutors which are cleared by the central government. Similarly, Delhi police which too comes under the Union Home Ministry, argued that they too shall be given the powers to select prosecutors and file an appeal without going to the Delhi government They also urged the Centre that LG can be made the final authority to issue the order on behalf of MHA.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP had already called a two-day special session to discuss legal remedies and challenge the notification of MHA before the court, based on the legal opinion they received from constitutional experts.

Sources also said that there are talks for not routing files related to prosecution sanctions for Indian Penal Code (IPC) crime to the state government and directly send them to the LG, who is now the administrator of Delhi, a Union Territory. Legal experts, however, said this proposal may land in trouble unless the Centre decides to nominate two categories of prosecuting authority which may further make the work of cops difficult.

“As far as law and order in Delhi is concerned, it is not with the Delhi government, therefore for other matters, the state government officials have no interest which leads to delays. It also means several rounds of persuasions for us to get a file cleared from the Delhi secretariat. By making this amendment, we can reduce one layer of decision making and expedite the whole process of delivering justice,” an official explained.