New Delhi: The police is an instrument to keep the ruling political party in power and every party has done so, former Union Home Secretary GK Pillai said on Wednesday. 

"Any ruling party, irrespective of whether it is CPI-M, or DMK or AIADMK or Congress... anybody, the police is an instrument to keep the political party in power. Every party has used this," he said at a round table conference on Naxal insurgency. 

The retired IAS official also said that IPS officers fear punishment of being transferred. 

"Because police do a lot of activities which are outside the purview of law. You have property disputes, you have any number of issues, encroachment all these things are informally solved by the police in the country. Hundreds and thousands of cases are solved (by police). You don't go to the courts but they are solved by the police informally," he said. 

"Now what happens is in some cases the police did not do justice because the system has lacked justice. In some of the states, vested interests approach the police and therefore the police then become an arm of the vested interest to work the other way around...they are going to create more injustice...," Pillai said at the discussion on "Spatial issues and Maoist insurgency in India" organised by the Observer Research Foundation. 

"You don't have the rule of law because no IPS officer is willing to, well I say, take the punishment of being transferred, he said. 

"Police training is a punishment posting. In the IPS, any of IPS officers sent as principal or so of police training college...is a punishment posting," he said. 

Ex-IPS officer ML Kumawat, who had served as Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Union Home Ministry, said the Maoists are spreading their tentacles in urban areas and state capitals as part of their "urban perspective plan".