Were it not for the fact that politicians’ vice-like grip over the power to transfer policemen has always been an elephant in the room, the reply to a recent RTI application by former Chief Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi would have come as a thunderbolt of a revelation.

Gandhi asked the Maharashtra government how many policemen, from the post of inspector upwards, were transferred in 2014, and how many of these were done by invoking a clause which permits the government to cite “exceptional circumstances”. 147 out of 150, was the candid confession of the Home Department. Were any reasons accorded for this exceptionally liberal use of an exception clause, ostensibly meant to be used only in case of exigencies? Even if there were, because the law makes it mandatory, the government will not tell us, for reasons of state. At best, some apocryphal statement would be trotted out, and that would be the end of the matter.