LAHORE, April 18: The changes decided to be made in the Police Order 2002 will defeat its basic purpose of eliminating political interference in the affairs of the force. It was a consensus of a number of senior police officers on Sunday who spoke to Dawn on the condition of anonymity.

They agreed that the working of their department should be regulated, but not the way the government had recently tried to. "It will sabotage the law introduced primarily to establish independent police," they said.

There was no use of introducing a law if the authorities could not maintain its basic aims and objectives, they said. According to them, the law in its original form had provided for an independent and neutral police, which were accountable to institutions to be established under it. The institutions were to be led by representatives of people.

They said the authors of the law had given an equal representation to government and opposition legislators on the provincial public safety commissions. But now the number of treasury legislators had been increased which would tilt the balance of power towards the political party in power.

"Police are already prone to highhandedness, corruption and excesses. The law had provided watchdog bodies comprising representatives of common people, government and opposition to control this. But, now, the watchdogs would become tools in the hands of the government," they said.

They said no government should forget at any stage that it would have to sit in opposition some day. The police, it was now using against the opposition, would be used against it in future.

They said giving powers to the Nazims to write the ACRs of police officers was not important as those who were responsible for law and order must have the authority to evaluate the performance of those actually deputed for the purpose.

Some police officers nevertheless said that through the changes in the law police would be given under the indirect control of bureaucracy. The change that instead of an officer of the rank of SSP, an officer of BS-20 would be the secretary of the provincial public safety and complaint commission was a step towards this end.

They maintained that the bureaucracy would also prevail upon the Nazims and the chief minister in making decisions about the writing of the ACRs or transfers or postings of senior police officers as "they are more closer to the political authorities than the police."