The recently approved Police Commission Ordinance stands as a missed opportunity to reform a critically important institution, with its final version betraying a deliberate unwillingness to loosen the government's control over law enforcement. By stripping away provisions that would have allowed the commission to recommend recruitment, promotion and posting of police officers including the inspector general, the ordinance ensures that the home ministry's traditional grip remains intact and the new body emerges toothless. The quiet omission of the word independent from the title, which officials confirmed to have been present in earlier drafts, sends an even clearer message. Decisions of this sort weaken the commission at the very moment of its birth. Clearly, a commission deprived of enforcement power is restricted from the outset and risks becoming yet another advisory platform incapable of directing meaningful change.
In a context where the police force has historically been perceived as an instrument of authority rather than service and where excessive and brutal force used during last year's mass uprising ignited widespread public anger, this decision is particularly disheartening. For decades, the force had already drifted away from its role as a public guardian and instead operated as a tool of political repression. During the July-August uprising in particular, the use of disproportionate force resulted in countless deaths and triggered a profound crisis of trust. Even police personnel lost their lives, which shows all too clearly that unchecked politicisation harms members of the force as much as citizens. Responding to the public's post-uprising demand that the police serve the people rather than political masters and never again be unleashed on the very population they are meant to protect, the interim government moved to introduce the ordinance and establish the commission. It was widely hoped this body would be capable of reshaping leadership culture, insulating operational command from external influence and preventing a repetition of the failures witnessed during the recent upheaval.
Yet the omissions in the ordinance seem designed to preserve the very mechanisms that enabled those failures in the first place. The implications of these omissions are far-reaching because they touch the core tension surrounding policing in Bangladesh. Recruitment and posting decisions have long served as levers through which successive governments have shaped the chain of command and ensured loyalty. Removing the commission's power to influence these processes all but guarantees that political considerations will continue to dominate police management. The explicit acknowledgment that the commission's recommendations will not be legally binding reduces its role to that of an advisory think tank whose findings can be quietly set aside. A commission that cannot recommend names for the top post, cannot comment on internal promotions and cannot advise on measures to prevent external influence is effectively consigned to irrelevance. In such circumstances, the stated goals of transparency and accountability become aspirational slogans rather than operational standards.
The government acknowledges the intense public and professional demand for an independent, professional police service but refuses to enact the legislative framework required to make it possible. If the commission was made stronger, it could create a clear break from the past and serve as a buffer between political authority and operational command. Instead the choice to centralise power within the home ministry suggests a preference for continuity over reform. What has emerged is a commission in name only, a symbolic gesture unlikely to restore public trust or prevent the police from being deployed as an instrument of the state. The public's demand was for substance, not symbolism, and on that count, this ordinance falls tragically short.
