The proposed Delhi Police Headquarters’ building that is to come up at Jai Singh Road appears to be jinxed.
Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who was to perform the bhoomi poojan and the foundation stone laying ceremony at the proposed site returned mid-way after officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) informed him that the site plan is yet to be approved by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and his involvement in the ceremony will be in contravention of the law.
The Home Minister, who has been at the centre of numerous controversies in the last one year, beat a hasty retreat, leaving the Delhi Police top brass red in the face. For the record, the new PHQ building was cleared by the then Urban Development Minister Sheila Kaul in 1995, but the project has been delayed due to the large number of clearances required from various Government agencies. For instance, the Urban Arts Commission and Archaeological Survey of India took ages to give their clearance for the project.
Friday’s incident has once again exposed the simmering tension between the MHA’s Union Territories (UT) division and Delhi Police. Incidentally, Delhi Police reports to the MHA and the lieutenant-Governor. At present, Delhi Police has its headquarters in the MSO Building owned by the Public Works Department. From the time Delhi Police came into existence in February 16, 1948, it has been hankering for a building of its own to house the police headquarters, but it has taken 65 years for successive Governments to permit the construction of the PHQ building in New Delhi district.
With MHA putting spokes in the name of clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the project appears to have been delayed further as no construction can begin without this clearance. Tongues started wagging after no one from the MHA turned up at the function. Sources said that a senior official in the UT division of the MHA advised Shinde not to participate in the foundation stone laying ceremony as the clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests is yet to come. Shinde who had consented to be the chief guest backtracked at the last moment.
The function was to begin at 10.45 am and the Delhi Police top brass were told about Shinde’s decision not to attend due to “certain inexplicable reasons” at 11 am, leaving senior police officers, including the outgoing Commissioner of Police Neeraj Kumar and his successor Bhim Sain Bassi, in the lurch. It is the general practice that Ministers of State (MOS) in the MHA attend official functions of Delhi Police and Central Police Organisations (CPOs) in the event of the Home Minister's inability to do so. However, Delhi Police were left high and dry as neither
RPN Singh nor Mullappally Ramachandran, turned up in Shinde’s place. Not just that, even Home Secretary Anil Goswami and his officers stayed away from the function. In the end, it was Gajendra Haldea, Advisor, Planning Commission, who saved the day by performing the bhoomi poojan. However, the function ended on a bitter note. Sources said Shinde and the babus in the MHA are miffed with Delhi Police over two incidents. The first being the December 16 gang-rape of a para-medical student and the second being the storming of Shinde’s official residence at 2 Krishna Menon Marg by Bharatiya Kisan Union activists. Many heads were to roll over the latter incident, but fortunately, the issue was sorted out.