UP Police Flag day History

Stories establish personalities and history creates an organisation. 23/11/1952 is a historic day in UP Police organisation, when first PM of India gave ' Police Colour ' (flag) to UP Police. This flag reflects our character and is symbolic to our proud history of how we have served nation and public with success, courage and dutifulness which includes supreme sacrifices too. This flag is inspirational for us and hoisting this flag generates new energies within us.

History of flags is associated with Napoleon Bonaparte. Force units going to different wars use to have separate flags to maintain their own unique identities and had their flag hoisted on battleground. In battleground sainik were ever ready to sacrifice self for honour of their flag. For identification of units involved in different missions earlier, Napoleon started tradition of wearing flag symbol ribbon on upper left side of heart. We all uniformed forces have accepted the same French tradition. Significance of flag is also seen in Mahabharata. Arjuna chariot had a flag in Kurukshetra war between Kaurava  and Pandavas. History is evident that this flag inspiration resulted in victory of righteousness.

In the same manner this flag of UP Police also inspires us to follow our professional duty.

By Sanjeev Tyagi IPS

Significance of Sports for Policemen

Is Sports a luxury or necessity of police force?

Police on ground works in Team. Like elsewhere, in police too good understanding of team member’s personality, temperament and capacities is a basic requirement to have professional trust for coordination and efficiency. Any team work require cooperation and coordination to move ahead as a collective force in a common direction to same goal, Individual talents utility is fully realized only where there is good cooperation and coordination in a team. Team leader’s needs to know – who can handle what?  But as the tasks handled by police teams have unique dynamics and gravity, the degree of trust and other values needed among POLICE members is much more than in any general team.

Sports help in physical fitness, alertness. Players come to know each other temperaments, personalities, physical and mental capabilities. They learn to cooperate and coordinate on field. Most importantly they learn reasons of failure. Member’s Alertness , communication gaps , complacency , coordination issues, positive attitude towards common goal , cooperation with team spirit etc can be grasped easily only in a natural context like sports.

The culture of sports is slowly diminishing because of work overload. But is it a healthy trend for the institution? The answer depends on individual’s opinion.

But do we have an institutional decision? Fortunately, yes the police institution always held sports to be an essential component of force profession. In my opinion, the sports tradition in police must continue with a larger focus for energizing policemen spirit to survive and thrive in wake of evolutionary pressures to adapt as per new needs of democracy demands.

By Sanjeev Tyagi IPS