Commissioner of Police (India)

Commissioners of Police in India are heads of the police force in certain metropolitan areas colloquially referred to as 'police commissionerates'.

They are traditionally members of the Indian Police Service with executive magisterial powers not granted to other senior police officers (members of the Indian Police Service), evolving from the historical role of justice of the peace, assigned to commissioners leading the presidency towns of British India.

The rank and authority conferred upon commissioners of police is largely uniform throughout India in that they are all executive magistrates under the Code of Criminal Procedure, however varies in that a commissioner of police forces of larger cities tend to be equated to higher ranks in the Indian Police Service—three of India's four biggest cities are led by commissioners equated to the rank of director-general of police. The police commissioner of lowest rank in India is that of Thrissur City Police, which is led by a superintendent (the lowest possible rank of a police commissioner)

Commissioners of police and their police forces are generally subordinate to and part of the police force of the state thereof, the only exceptions being Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. The police forces of Mumbai and Kolkata are not part of the police force of their respective states; they report directly to their states' home ministers. As Delhi is a union territory with limited self-government, the commissioner does not report to the local government; it reports directly to the central minister of home affairs. All, except one (Patna), of the 20 largest cities in India have police forces headed by commissioners of police.

Commissioners of Police in Kerala do not have magisterial powers. The Government of Kerala appointed senior IGP-rank IPS officers as Commissioners of Police for Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi as an initial step towards a full police commissionerate system; however, the move faced opposition. Consequently, the state government has not granted magisterial powers to the commissioners due to political opposition, including from within the ruling coalition.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.