New Delhi, Aug 19 - India needs urgent reforms in policing to free it from the shackles of politicians and bureaucrats and make it more effective and trustful for common citizens, says former police chiefs and experts. Most states have been dragging their feet over the reforms fearing loss of political control over its forces.

Reforms would mean doing away with the colonial legacy that lingers in the form of the archaic Police Act of 1861, say those who have been working on bringing about these changes that they feel are imperative if the nation is to be saved.

Police reform is too important to be neglected and too urgent to be delayed, Maya Dharuwala of the NGO Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) told IANS.

Former director general of police Prakash Singh, who had petitioned the Supreme Court in 1996 for removing deficiencies in police functioning, said: 'The main problem in Indian policing is the political and bureaucratic set-up.'

Singh told IANS that politicians and bureaucrats don't want to give up the 'stranglehold' on the police force, which is 'used less and misused more than often'.

Police need to be 'freed from the shackles of these establishments', he said, adding hindrances to this are natural because 'it is like abolishing the zamindari system and taking away land from zamindars (landlords)'.

Singh believes 'reforms and changing the 150-year-old colonial legacy of the Police Act have to take place. The new India cannot go hand in hand with the archaic act that was designed to serve imperial masters.'

Home Minister P. Chidambaram, at an internal security meeting Monday, said the country was facing grave threats from terrorism, insurgency and left-wing extremism.

Chidambaram said the state governments were lax in implementing police reforms, which were recommended after two former DGPs - Prakash Singh and N.K. Singh - filed public interest suits in the Supreme Court in 1996 for directions to the state and central governments to address deficiencies in the functioning of the police.

According to the CHRI, most of the 28 states of India are refusing to implement the reforms and comply with court orders despite a tough posture from the union government and the Supreme Court.