The Centre has formalised fresh Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for security forces to deal with public agitation, like street protests witnessed in Jammu and Kashmir in 2010, which stipulate that a “magistrate’’ may be present on the ground to guide police forces during such agitation.
The SOPs also say that the use of “real firepower’’ should be used as a last resort by Central and state police forces to dispel agitating crowds. It also says that in the post-operation period, the use of force should be stopped immediately. The move is aimed at preventing security personnel from going after the agitators when the crowd is already withering away.
Earlier in February, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that there is “a need to revisit standard operating procedures and crowd control measures to deal with public agitation with non-lethal, yet effective and more focused measures”. The Union home ministry will soon circulate the fresh SOPs to all Central paramilitary organisations and state police forces.
The SOPs, the first of its kind drawn up by the home ministry, say that the onus of providing “medical aid” to persons injured in police firing will be on the security forces. “We have also stressed on the importance of having a magistrate present on the ground where force has to be used. It can be done in situations where the security forces have information about demonstrations or agitation well in advance,” a senior government official told this newspaper. The ministry has listed out 12-15 broad categories of “non lethal weapons’’ like shock guns, rubber bullets, fibre glass batons, electric batons, pepper balls, chilli grenades, 20-foot-high movable iron walls and water cannons for the Central and state forces to choose from.