By Arun Pratap Singh
Nainital, 21 May: The Uttarakhand High Court heard a PIL filed seeking directions to the government to abolish the revenue police system in the state. After hearing the case, the division bench of Chief Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Rakesh Thapliyal disposed of the PIL, while issuing directions to the state government to replace revenue policing in the state with regular police in within a period of next one year and submit its report before the court.
During the hearing today, the state government informed the court that it has made arrangements for regular policing in many areas and is making efforts to implement regular policing in other areas.
It may be recalled that, in 2004, the Supreme Court also considered the need to replace revenue policing with regular policing while hearing the case of Naveen Chandra vs State Government. Then the Supreme Court had observed that the Revenue Police is not provided training like the regular police. It was also observed that the Revenue Police does not have adequate resources for policing and to set up facilities like modern equipment, computers, DNA and blood tests, forensic tests, fingerprints, etc. In the absence of these facilities, there are difficulties in investigating crimes as well as to maintain law and order in revenue policing areas.
While hearing the PIL today, the High Court observed that there should be a uniform law and order system for all the citizens of the state.
It may be further recalled that Uttarakhand High Court had also given several guidelines to the government in this regard in the year 2018, but the government did not follow that order. In the PIL, the court has been requested to ensure that the earlier order is implemented. This PIL had been filed by the NGO, Samadhan, from Dehradun.
