EDITORIAL: A step forward

The two police bills, enacted by the Lower House, give the provinces power to mobilise their own police forces independently

With the Federal Parliament unanimously endorsing the two crucial bills related to the police administration, all provinces will enjoy the right to mobilise the law enforcement agency to maintain peace and security in their districts. Shortly after the election of the provincial assembly and the formation of the provincial governments, all the provinces had been demanding an umbrella law, which would facilitate them to have their own law to moblise the police force. After the umbrella bills are also approved by the National Assembly and signed them into laws by the President, all the provinces can moblise the police force to maintain peace and security within the provinces; collect information to reduce the crime rate; file cases if the government is a plaintiff and handle other cases that do not fall under the jurisdiction of the federal police. The Lower House endorsed the two bills — Police Personnel Adjustment Bill and the Bill to Govern the Process of Operation, Supervision and Coordination of Nepal Police and Provincial Police — on Sunday. The second bill lays the groundwork for the transfer of police personnel to the provinces and the benefits they are entitled to once they are transferred to the provinces.

As per the bills, the federal government will keep around 20,000 police personnel while around 55,000 others will be transferred to the provinces with two additional grades as an incentive. A Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), deployed by the federal government, will be leading the provincial police force. The DIGs, SSPs and SPs deployed to the provinces can be transferred by the Centre after taking consent from the respective province’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. This is only a stop-gap arrangement, and the provinces will retain the right to transfer them in the future. The province’s internal affairs ministries will be able to mobilise the DIGs, SSPs and SPs to execute various tasks as specified in both the bills. Until the provinces are fully functional, the Police Personnel Adjustment Bill authorises the Centre to transfer police personnel from the rank of DSP and below to the provinces to set up their police force. All the rank-and-file of the police personnel will receive the same salary and facilities that they are currently entitled to.

The central police force will work as a reserve force and will handle cases of sedition, offences related to immigration, citizenship, passport, terrorism and human trafficking, cyber and organisational crime; cases involving more than one province; cross border crime; and cases referred to the federal police by a ministry or court. The provisional police force will have to work in coordination with the chief district officer of the concerned district to maintain law and order. Should it require additional police force to maintain law and order in a province, such a province can ask the Centre for more, and the Centre can request the neighbouring provinces to deploy additional police forces. The bills should satisfy the provinces as they have addressed most of their concerns. They can also enact their own laws based on the bills. Belated though, the move is one step forward towards institutionalisng the hard-earned federalism.

Nepal Studies in TU

Tribhuvan University’s decision to add an extra year to the bachelor’s degree courses in humanities from the next academic session, to begin in September-October, is long overdue, which will bring the premier university’s courses on par with international ones. Other streams of TU, namely science, management and education, have already implemented four-year bachelor courses, but humanities was facing difficulty in doing so due to the large number of students – more than 60,000 - enrolled in its stream. Some 34 subjects are taught in TU’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

TU’s decision to introduce Nepal Studies as a compulsory subject, apart from English and Nepali, at the bachelor’s level, is also welcome. This has become necessary as students have so little knowledge about their country’s geography, history, administration and culture even after graduating from the university. During the partyless Panchayat era, a subject called Nepal Parichaya (Introduction to Nepal) was taught to students in grades 11 and 12, which gave them all-round knowledge about the country’s politics, economy, culture and foreign policy. The subject was later scrapped. The new course should help inculcate patriotic sentiments among the students.