Karnataka DGP M.A. Saleem Abolishes Colonial-Era Police Orderly System

Karnataka Director General and Inspector General of Police M.A. Saleem has ordered the abolition of the state's colonial-era orderly system, ending the practice of assigning roughly 3,320 police personnel to non-policing household duties at senior officers' residences.

The orderly system dates to British-era policing practice, under which constables attached to senior officers were meant to assist with security and official duties but had, over decades, been redirected into cooking, cleaning, gardening, dropping children to school and running personal errands for officers' families. Karnataka's order creates 373 new follower posts in the Civil Police, to be filled through outsourced contracts at wages fixed in line with minimum wage norms, offset by an equal reduction in posts within the Karnataka State Reserve Police, whose personnel had previously supplied the bulk of the orderly force.

Saleem, a 1993-batch IPS officer born on June 25, 1966, in Chikkabanavara on the outskirts of Bengaluru, was formally appointed Karnataka's DG and IGP last August after serving in interim charge, following a three-decade career that included postings across 26 different roles. He holds postgraduate degrees in commerce and police management, and is widely credited with reforming Bengaluru's traffic management, first as Deputy Commissioner of Police, Traffic, East, then as Additional Commissioner of Police, Traffic and Security, and later as Special Commissioner of Police, Traffic, before moving into intelligence, economic offences and criminal investigation roles that culminated in his appointment as the state's police chief.

Under the revised structure, the number of orderlies permitted per rank has been fixed at three for Director General and Additional Director General ranks, and one each for Deputy Inspector General, Superintendent of Police and Commandant ranks, with the Director General and Inspector General retaining six followers under a no-dual-benefit condition carried over from an earlier 2017 government order on the subject. Karnataka Police units without current follower postings will use temporary staff reallocated from the state reserve police, as detailed in an annexure to the order, until formal recruitment rules for the new posts are finalised.

The reform follows years of criticism from police reform advocates and the second Administrative Reforms Commission, which recommended abolishing the orderly system as far back as 2005, and the Sixth Pay Commission, which made a similar recommendation in 2008, arguing that trained constables, most of them now graduates rather than the minimally qualified recruits of decades past, should not be diverted to household work when the force faces a persistent shortage of personnel for core policing duties such as patrolling and investigation.

Karnataka's move mirrors similar reforms carried out earlier by Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the latter having abolished its own camp-follower system roughly eight years ago after allegations that a serving officer's daughter had assaulted a police driver, and follows a Madras High Court order mandating strict compliance with Tamil Nadu's own abolition of the practice, part of what commentators have described as southern states leading the way on the issue while several northern states have yet to act.

The order, issued in compliance with the Supreme Court's 2006 judgment in the Prakash Singh case on police reforms and a state government order dated January 12 this year, takes effect with immediate effect across Karnataka Police units, with the long-standing practice of assigning regular police personnel as orderlies formally discontinued.