Of PSO ‘Culture’

As we reported yesterday, personal security officers (PSOs) deployed for the security of a whole lot of so-called VIPs (anyone with money and muscle power and political clout is a VIP in Asom) are reflective of a government that has absolutely no regards for the tenets of democracy and aspirations of the electorate. Ordinary citizens may be bombed and countless families uprooted, but for security they must turn to themselves because all roads of security lead to that fort called Dispur and a gamut of other VIPs — who alone are entitled to security on earth because, after all, they are so ‘very important persons’. In our report we have also thrown a poser to Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, who handles the State Home portfolio too, as to why his administration has set such a perverse and undemocratic precedent of PSOs for a select few in a State where terrorism is the order of the day and where it is the vast majority of hapless and unarmed hoi polloi who are the worst victims of terrorism. An answer is in order, for the Chief Minister is an elected representative, and therefore, accountable to none but the people who have elected him to power. In fact he should himself set an example by cutting on his mammoth convoy which looks not only ugly but which also tortures every law-abiding citizen on the road by bringing traffic to a standstill for about half-an-hour or so at every point. It is absolutely undemocratic when one person, that too elected by the people, has such an impenetrable security shield while the real masters in a democracy — ordinary citizens — have none. But does the Chief Minister realize this?

source: the sentinel assam