Policing is primarily a state subject under the Constitution. Discuss the challenges in enforcing a Supreme Court-mandated uniform protocol on police conduct across states.

Public order and police are Entries 1 and 2 of the State List, Seventh Schedule, making police organisation, training and field conduct a state responsibility [1]. The Supreme Court's move (July 2026) to frame an all-India protocol on police handling of demonstrations [3] is therefore constitutionally sound but institutionally difficult to enforce.

Federal design limits operational reach

• A judicial protocol binds all states, but its execution — standing orders, drill manuals, crowd-control equipment, deployment norms — rests with individual state governments [1].
• The Union Home Ministry's role is largely advisory and financial (modernisation assistance, model police legislation), not directive [5].
• States retain discretion over prohibitory orders and dispersal decisions, the very points where excesses occur.

Poor record of earlier judicial directives

• The Prakash Singh (2006) directions — security of tenure, Police Establishment Boards, Police Complaints Authorities — remain unevenly implemented; the Court is still monitoring compliance in WP(C) 310/1996 nearly two decades later [2].
• Several states enacted their own Police Acts that diluted the mandated safeguards, showing how uniform norms fragment on entering state statute books.

Capacity and training deficits

• State forces carried roughly 24% vacancies, leaving crowd situations to overstretched personnel [1].
• About 86% of state police is constabulary, with limited career progression and little specialised training in non-lethal crowd management [1] — a protocol cannot be followed by forces not trained for it.

Weak accountability machinery

• Protest policing is discretionary and evidence-poor; without mandatory videography and independent inquiry into complaints of excess, a protocol lacks teeth.
• Amit Sahni (2020) required balancing protest with public convenience, yet left enforcement largely to police discretion [4].

The difficulty, then, is institutional rather than constitutional. A protocol co-designed with states through the Inter-State Council, supported by BPRD-standardised crowd-control training, periodic compliance affidavits and independent scrutiny of excess complaints, can make uniformity workable — securing Article 19 freedoms without disturbing the federal scheme.