Chairing a workshop on ``Police Reforms'' organised by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), he said that more than 50 per cent of complaints received by the NHRC, were related to police excesses. ``There is a need some sanity in the system.''

Though the Supreme Court had given some important judgments during last two years to make the police more accountable, the average policemen were largely ignorant about them.

In his inaugural address Former Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta demanded immediate implementation of the National Police Commission (NPC) recommendations to bring more transparency in the police system.

He regretted that the police had lost credibility and degenerated into a tool in the hands of the people who are in power. Justice Venkatachaliah alsosuggested drafting amendment to the 1861 Police Act saying the existing policing system should be reformed in consonance with the developments that had taken place during the last 50 years in the administration of criminal justice in general and police functioning and practices in particular.

Gupta, who had revived the debate on the two decade old recommendations of the NPC when as the Home Minister he wrote to chief ministers in April last year to implement them, said that the response of the state governments was poor as none of them wanted dilution of their powers over police.

He stressed the need to generate public awareness for putting pressure on political parties to bring necessary reforms in the police establishment making it professionally competent and reasonably clean and responsive to public criticism of its functioning.

He said the proposed reforms would reduce to the minimum the possible misuse of powers by the policemen and their controllers -- political executives and bureaucracy -- byintroducing more effective systems of checks and balances.

In his keynote address, Former Chief Justice of India, Justice J S Verma stressed the participatory role of the people in reforming the police. Former Attorney General Ashok Desai said there should be some method to protect honest policemen from harassment and punish those who do not work according to law. He said arbitrary transfers of police personnel should be stopped and a fixed tenure be made mandatory and added that police should be made accountable and people friendly.