Oral orders to police in india

.60 Situations arising from oral orders issued by the supervisory officers including the political executive, while on tour or otherwise, are known to cause considerable embarrassment to the field officers when the orders happen to require the commission of illegal, irregular, improper or unjust acts. A few State Governments have issued instructions in the recent past for the guidance of officers to ensure proper conduct. The purpose these instructions is that the officer receiving such oral instructions should make a record of the instructions and get it confirmed by the superior officer concerned. We are aware that an administrative apparatus would get badly cramped and become ineffective in day to day service to the public if it is rigidly insisted that no functionary need take action under orders from a higher ranking functionary in the normal line of supervision unless the order is in writing. Several situations may occur in daily life in which a supervisory functionary on the spot may give oral orders for immediate execution by the subordinate functionaries concerned. Several such situations be easily imagined in law and order matters. We ace, therefore, not in favour of enunciating any rigid role that every order that flows from one level to the tower level in administrative hierarchy should be in writing before the intended action is taken. While oral orders cannot be shut out totally from the administrative system, they can and should certainly be avoided in situations which do not involve any element of urgency and can wait for the oral orders to be confirmed in writing before the intended action is initiated. Our recommendation would, therefore, be that—(i) oral orders should be avoided as far as possible and may be resorted to only in situations which call for immediate executive action and cannot wait for the issue of written orders in confirmation of the oral order;(ii) a record of every oral order be kept both by the issuing officer and the recipient officerin the relevant files; and(iii) a subordinate officer receiving oral orders from a higher ranking officer shall be entitled to ask for and get confirmatory orders in writing from the higher functionary, for record.
Interaction between elected representatives and the police15.61 In any democratic system we must have with the executive at different levels for bringing to the notice of the executive whatever information the elected representatives may have in which they feel the need for some kind of corrective action in the interests of justice. We must keep open all scope for such interaction. Persons subjected to flagrant injustice by executive action will be inclined to share their grief and disappointment with several others in public including the elected representatives and will expect them to do something to set matters right While conceding the need for interaction between elected representatives and the executive in such situations, we are anxious to ensure that this does not lead to unauthorised interference as such with the performance of the executive. We, therefore, feel that if as a code of conduct it is laid down that elected representatives will interact with the police at the level of the Deputy Superintendent of Police or above only it would avoid situations in which the executives at the operational level in police stations and circles may be overawed by the stature of the political functionary and may be inclined to accept and act upon whatever information he passes on to them without making the necessary check and verification which they might make normally.