Although the Supreme Court is conducting hearing writs against the dissolution of the House of Representatives (HoR), the country, in principle, is headed towards the mid-term polls slated for April and May this year. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has described the poll announcement as the compulsive move that he took to do away with repeated obstacles to the effective functioning of the government. Election is the soul of democracy and no political party is supposed to shy away from it. The people, parties and nation should embrace the polls as a viable means to end the political crisis. While doing so, all the stakeholders must not forget that they should make certain compromise and put on hold important tasks for the purpose. The sudden declaration of election has led to the postponement of several administrative and legal plans that were in the offing.

One such scheme is the integration of police force as per the federal set-up. As the entire police force has to be engaged in the preparations for the upcoming elections, the process to integrate the police offices into the province police entities came to a halt. According to a news report of this daily, a committee under the coordination of Joint Secretary Thaneshwor Gautam of the Ministry of Home Affairs was busy doing internal preparations for taking the integration process ahead. The Police Headquarters had also set criteria, procedures and internal preparations for it. It is natural for the ministry to shift focus on the poll by putting the police integration process on the backburner as it has been tasked with conducting the polls in a fair, impartial and peaceful manner.

The government under PM Oli had started works to convert Nepal Police into the Provincial Police Offices after President Bidya Devi Bhandari ratified the Police Integration Act on February 11, 2020. The Act was devised based on the survey report on the Organisation and Management (O&M) of the Nepal Police and the Province Police. The Police Headquarters had established various internal mechanisms to conclude the adjustment criteria, procedures, software development for its application registration, structural and resource management framework, shifting them from the centre to the district levels. The report has suggested bringing the peace and security management rights and command control of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur districts under the Valley Police Office. An ordinance, issued some months ago, granted legal authorities to the Valley Police Office to this end.

The ministry and the Police Headquarters were set to open the adjustment application from the first week of January, 2021. But now the police personnel have been mobilised for the security of polls, deferring the plan to open the adjustment application. The related Act and ordinance have provided the State governments with legal mandate to create their own police force. The province police units have responsibility not only to maintain law and order but also to deal with the conflicts that may arise over the use of natural resources by the provinces. The police integration process is an important step in federalising the internal security apparatus but now it needs to be put off for the broader cause, the election, vital to solve the political impasse roiling the federal republic.