Policing in India a difficult task: Chidambaram

     Raipur, June 02, 2010: Government of India today admitted facing problems in policing the country due to troubled neighbourhood, insufficient police personnel and ill-equipped forces.

     “Policing a country of over 1.1 billion people is not an easy task. Policing a country in a troubled neighbourhood makes the task more difficult and policing a country with insufficient police stations, and inadequate and ill-equipped police forces makes the task almost formidable,” Home Minister P Chidambaram told the 40^th All India Police Science Congress at Raipur.

     Talking about Chhattisgarh, Chidambaram said “Chhattisgarh is going through a difficult time. In the last eight weeks there have been 28 major incidents of violence in the state in which several were killed or injured.”

      On the police population ratio, he said “The ratio is much lower than the international norm, which conceals more than it reveals.” The police population ratio of the whole country was about 160 policemen per One Lakh population, he added.

      The condition of the troubled states are even worse as the Home Minister said the ratio was 75 policemen against one lakh population in Bihar and in Uttar Pradesh it was 115.

    In the case of Maoists hit states like Andhra Pradesh the ratio was 125, in Orissa 135 and in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, the two states most affected by the Left Wing Extremists, the number was about 205 policemen against 1,00,000 population, he said.

     There were also a large number of vacancies in police posts of all ranks in the country, Chidambaram said adding “the total number of sanctioned posts as on March 31, 2010 in all ranks is about 21 lakh. Of these, about 3,35,000 posts are vacant.”

     On the police stations, he said there are not enough police stations. In some of the districts most affected by the Left Wing Extremism, the police station exists only in name.

     Also there are police stations where men do not hold any weapons for the fear of the weapons being looted, he said.

     “You recall the case of Lalgarh Police Station in West Midnapore District of West Bengal. That police station was closed and locked from the inside for several months until the CRPF liberated it,” the Home Minister said.

     Talking about the lack of proper training to the forces to make that a modern police force, he said the basic training being provided by almost all the states were ‘inadequate’ to meet the challenges like terrorism, insurgency and Left Wing Extremism.

     “I do not find states addressing these new and growing requirements,” he said and underlined the importance of “quality of recruitment, quality of training and the quality of human resources management” for the police reforms.

     The Home Minister also had a closed door meeting with the Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh, and top state and central police forces on the issue of tackling the Maoists violence.

     “We discussed about the Maoists issue with the Home Minister, officers of the Central Para military forces and state police officers,” the Chief Minister told reporters but refused to divulge details saying the things are related to security and strategy, which cannot be shared with the media.

      However, official sources told ChhattisgarhTopNews.Com that the two hours long high level meeting discussed about the operational details and new strategy after the Maoists had carried out successive strikes on government forces and civilians in the state in the last two months killing over 100 policemen and innocent villagers.