Why SC ruling in 2006 on police reforms must be reconsidered

CHENNAI: On September 22, 2006, the Supreme Court delivered its judgment in Prakash Singh v Union of India, often hailed as a watershed in police reform. Drawing on decades of expert reports – the National Police Commission (1977–1981), Ribeiro Committee (1998), Padmanabhaiah Committee (2000), Malimath Committee (2003), and Soli Sorabjee Model Police Act (2006) – the Court issued seven binding directives de novo as a national police code to operate ‘until legislation is enacted’.

Convinced that the central malaise of Indian policing lay in its subservience to the political executive, the Court sought to insulate it from the political interference and recast it from a colonial ‘ruler’s police’ into a democratic ‘people’s police’.

The Seven Commandments prescribed by the Supreme Court were:

1. State Security Commission: This was envisaged as a buffer between the police and the government, with powers to frame broad policies and evaluate police performance. Almost all States have constituted it. But, in practice, these bodies are dominated by serving officers, lack independent members, and function without real autonomy, funds, or influence.

2. Appointment and tenure of DGP/Head of Police Force (HOPF): The DGP/HOPF was to be chosen by the State from a UPSC-shortlisted panel of three senior-most IPS officers, with a minimum tenure of two years irrespective of superannuation, to ensure stable leadership. However, States devised ingenious evasions: appointing ‘acting HOPFs’ for extended periods, creating parallel posts to wield real power while reducing the HOPF to a figurehead, forcing premature retirements, sending belated or incomplete panels to UPSC, and even spoiling performance assessment reports to exclude unwanted officers. Despite SC reiterations and even contempt notices, compliance has been patchy. Worse, given the age pyramid, the tenure rule locks out two or three subsequent batches from the top post, breeding frustration and demoralisation, while failing to secure genuine independence for the incumbent.

3. Fixed tenure for key field officers: The Court mandated a minimum tenure of two years for IGs, DIGs, SPs, and SHOs to prevent whimsical transfers. Yet arbitrary and politically motivated transfers remain the norm.

4. Separation of investigation from law and order: Intended to professionalise investigation, this directive was implemented on paper in a few Metros, often only for minor cases. In most States, investigation and law-and-order duties are still carried out by the same officers, due to manpower shortages and lack of specialised training.

5. Police Establishment Board: Created to decide postings and transfers up to DSP rank and recommend senior appointments, the Board was meant to curb political interference. Though constituted in most States, it functions only after getting informal clearance from the political leadership and is only a rubber stamp.

6. Police Complaints Authorities: These bodies, envisaged at State and district levels and ideally chaired by retired judges, were to investigate serious misconduct. Many exist only on paper, remain starved of funds and staff, or are headed by bureaucrats rather than judges. They rarely conduct meaningful inquiries, and command little public trust.

7. National Security Commission: Intended to oversee appointments of chiefs of Central Police Organisations (CPOs) such as the BSF, CRPF, CISF, ITBP, etc., this body was constituted in 2007 but soon became defunct. The Union Home Ministry continues to control appointments, leaving the directive hollow.

Law imposed from above – untempered by debate and unanchored in consent – is but a hollow shell. The States complied in form but defied in substance. When a Court must sustain its command through endless contempt petitions and perpetual supervision, it is not law but administration by fiat.

Such continuing mandamus imperils both institutions: the judiciary, whose authority ebbs when compliance falters, and the legislature, whose will to legislate withers when overshadowed by judicial command.

Illusion of Reform

Two decades on, there is scant empirical evidence that India is any closer to the goal of a ‘people’s police’. For citizens, especially the poor and the powerless, little has changed. The police remain largely politicised, corrupt, heavy-handed, and unaccountable.

Custodial torture continues unchecked, and in 2025 India was branded ‘high-risk in the Global Torture Index. Scandals, controversies, abuses, and riots still erupt with the same grim regularity as before.

Meanwhile, new challenges – cybercrime, financial fraud, organised syndicates, and transnational criminal networks – demand professional, technology-enabled policing, not paper directives.

It is a dangerous illusion to believe that a judgment alone can cleanse the rot in our policing. A court may proclaim, but it cannot supply the sinews of reform – funds, technology, trained manpower, or moral purpose. Genuine reform demands clarity of vision, political resolve, financial commitment and the discipline of faithful execution – tasks that properly belong to legislatures and executives, not to judges.

The central paradox of Prakash Singh is that by sidelining political institutions in the name of reform, it made genuine police reform impossible. As Robert Reiner observed in The Politics of the Police (2010), policing institutions must evolve through ‘political choice and social consensus, not judicial decree’.

Reform fails either because it offers a false cure or because it is never applied in earnest. Prakash Singh failed on both counts. It has produced reams of paperwork but little real progress. This is not reform but a masquerade, where the costume has changed, yet the actor remains the same.

Separation of Powers Breached

The Constitution may not mandate a rigid separation of powers, but it does recognise distinct domains: legislatures design institutions and policies; executives administer them; courts interpret laws and protect rights. Judicial review is a shield against unconstitutional action by the legislature and executive – not a licence to govern.

The Supreme Court itself has affirmed these limits. In Asif Hameed v State of Jammu & Kashmir (1989), it held that judicial review is not a warrant to intervene in policy matters or to dictate how the executive should perform its administrative functions. In Balco Employees’ Union v Union of India (2002), it cautioned that judges must not substitute their own views for those of the government in matters of policy.

Yet in Prakash Singh, the Supreme Court crossed this line. It did not merely enforce rights, it legislated. It framed tenure rules, prescribed appointment procedures, and mandated oversight commissions – an institutional design that properly belongs to the legislatures.

Even if described as temporary, these directives function as binding law until displaced by statute. Worse, they create templates that fetter legislative discretion when laws are eventually enacted.

The Court justified its intervention by invoking Article 142 (‘to do complete justice’), drawing an analogy with Vishaka v State of Rajasthan (1997). But Vishaka addressed a genuine vacuum – the absence of legislation to protect women against sexual harassment in workplaces – by framing appropriate guidelines.

Policing, by contrast, is a State List subject governed by statutory frameworks already in place. The Supreme Court itself has in other rulings questioned whether Article 142 can override or supplant substantive law.

Properly understood, Article 142 is designed to ensure complete justice in individual cases – not to legislate, redesign institutions, or restructure governance. Using it thus as in Prakash Singh risks eroding the separation of powers.

Finally, Prakash Singh transformed expert committee recommendations into binding law, bypassing the essential test of political debate. Technocracy may advise, but only democracy can decide. Expert opinion may illuminate policy, but it cannot substitute for legislative deliberation.

As Winston Churchill observed: “Experts should be on tap, not on top.” By converting expert advice into binding directives, the Court inverted this hierarchy. In a democracy, it is the legislatures that must decide – even if slowly, even if imperfectly – for legitimacy lies not in speed or expertise, but in consent.

Federalism Undermined

India’s states are vast and varied. Uttar Pradesh’s policing challenges bear little resemblance to Kerala’s; border States contend with insurgency while metropolitan cities battle sophisticated cybercrime and financial fraud.

Federalism exists precisely to let States tailor solutions suited to their unique challenges. Prakash Singh undermines this by imposing a one-size-fits-all template from the Bench.

The Constitution places ‘police’ in the State List (Entry 2), recognising public order as a quintessential State responsibility. By involving the UPSC and the Union Home Secretary in shortlisting three names for a State’s DGP/HOPF, Prakash Singh injected Union influence into what had always been an exclusive State domain.

This design is flawed in both principle and practice. A Chief Minister or State Home Minister, with intimate knowledge of officers’ competence, integrity, temperament and credibility is far better placed to assess suitability than distant authorities in New Delhi, who rely on often unreliable annual Performance Assessment Reports. Indeed, the Union itself recognised their inadequacy by introducing 360-degree evaluations.

While Tamil Nadu’s Police (Reform) Act, 2013 allows a shortlist of five names, the UPSC insists on three, citing Prakash Singh. This is no trivial administrative detail but a direct encroachment on the legislative and executive authority of States.

The problem is compounded by asymmetry. States are bound hand and foot by judicially mandated reforms while the Union’s own vast policing apparatus escapes similar scrutiny. In effect, States have been placed under judicial receivership whereas the Union’s discretion is untouched. This double standard is irreconcilable with the principle affirmed in SR Bommai v Union of India (1994), that federalism forms part of the Constitution’s basic structure.

Another striking asymmetry lies in the treatment of comparable posts. The UPSC and the Union Government play no role – and rightly so – in the appointment of a State’s Chief Secretary, Home Secretary, Finance Secretary, or Principal Chief Conservator of Forests. All these positions are as critical and as sensitive to political pressure as the DGP/HOPF, if not more. Why, then, is the police chief alone singled out for judicial guardianship?

The incongruities of Prakash Singh underline why reforms must emerge from legislatures, and how piecemeal judicial fixes, however well-intentioned, erode credibility.

Democratic Accountability Distorted

In a parliamentary system, the Chief Minister or Home Minister of a State is politically accountable for public order. Voters judge their performance and reward or punish them at the ballot box. That chain of accountability pre-supposes that these elected leaders retain real authority over police leadership.

Prakash Singh disrupted this link by interposing unelected bodies like the State Security Commissions, Police Establishment Boards and Police Complaints Authorities – lacking both democratic legitimacy and institutional durability – between the political executive and the police. By curtailing the executive’s discretion in appointing and transferring the HOPF, the Court intended to curb abuse; the effect, however, was to erode legitimate oversight.

Comparative international practice highlights the anomaly. In the United States, each State has its own policing model: sheriffs are directly elected in many jurisdictions while police chiefs are accountable to elected Mayors or Governors. In Canada, provincial police are overseen by provincial Ministers. In Germany and Australia, policing is fully under the control of State or Länder Ministers. Even in the United Kingdom, directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners appoint Chief Constables and set policing priorities and budgets, while the Metropolitan Police Commissioner reports to the Mayor of London.

Across democracies, the principle is consistent: the police enjoy operational independence but remain accountable to elected authority. No democracy outsources this responsibility to unelected commissions, no central body dictates shortlists for State police chiefs, and no court presumes to design the architecture of police reform.

On this count, the core premise of Prakash Singh – that the police should be insulated from the political executive – was fundamentally flawed. India must restore the pre-2006 position and States should not be resorting to ingenious evasions.

When Every Pillar Faltered

The response of all three constitutional pillars – States, Union, and Judiciary – to Prakash Singh was disappointing.

· States: Instead of asserting their constitutional authority, they yielded with surprising ease. Their energies went into mimicking compliance, drafting escape clauses, and devising stratagems to sidestep the judgment. Rather than pressing for a Constitution Bench review to restore reform to the State Legislature, they abdicated their role.

· Union: It disregarded the Supreme Court’s seventh directive on Central Police Organisations (CPOs), yet made no common cause with the States in seeking a review of the judgment. Instead, it exploited the foothold it gained in State police leadership through UPSC and the Union Home Secretary. Expediency prevailed over principle.

· Judiciary: It ventured into detailed institutional design – for which it lacks tools, expertise, and accountability – and then proved reluctant to retreat, entrenching continuing mandamus and drawing the Court into supervisory governance.

Restoring Police Reform

Prakash Singh emerged from genuine frustration with politicised policing. But noble intentions cannot sanctify flawed methods or justify meagre results.

The post-2006 landscape is marked by hollow structures, weakened accountability, unsettled federal balance, and too little professionalisation.

History reminds us that the Supreme Court has had the humility and courage to correct its own errors. In ADM Jabalpur v Shivkant Shukla (1976), it infamously ruled that even the right to life under Article 21 could be suspended during the Emergency, leaving citizens defenceless. Four decades later, in Justice KS Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017), the Court decisively overturned that error, declaring the right to privacy intrinsic to liberty and expressly disowning ADM Jabalpur.

That act of judicial courage restored faith in constitutional principle. Prakash Singh (2006) now demands a similar reconsideration.

It is time for the States to act in concert: to petition for a Constitution Bench review to set Prakash Singh aside – not to forsake reform, but to free it from a judicial template and return it to its proper home: the elected legislatures, which are accountable to the citizens. The way forward lies not in continuing mandamus or judicial micromanagement, but in democratic deliberation.

Only through that path can India truly replace the ‘ruler’s police’ with the ‘people’s police’ – not in rhetoric, but in reality.

The author is a retired IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre, a former Vice-Chancellor of Indian Maritime University, Chennai, and Member, High-Level Committee on Union-State Relations constituted by the Government of Tamil Nadu