Give priority to policing in state budgets: Chidambaram
February 5th, 2010 - 8:24 pm ICT by IANS
New Delhi, Feb 5 (IANS) Home Minister P. Chidambaram Friday asked the state governments to give high priority in budget allocation to the strengthening of their police forces.
Addressing a meeting of the consultative committee of the home ministry, Chidambaram lamented that policing was not being given attention by states while allocating funds and urged them to modernize and augment police forces at the earliest.
“The first duty of the government is to provide security to its people, without which no development is possible. The centre has been forced to substantially increase the strength of its paramilitary forces, because the state forces could not be augmented and modernised to the desired level,” he said.
Chidambaram’s remarks came close on the heels of an internal security conclave for state chief ministers to be held Sunday.
According to home ministry figures, all states and union territories had a sanctioned strength of 1,746,215 policemen as on Jan 1, 2008.
Against that number, only 1,478,888 policemen were in place. In addition, the ratio of available police per 100,000 people for the country is about 130 while the international average is about 270.
At a meeting of intelligence officers in December last year, Chidambaram said it was imperative to devise a new security system in the country to recruit more policemen and policewomen.
“In my estimate, states would have to recruit over 400,000 constables this year and in the next two years in order to fill the vacancies and in order to provide for expansion of the police forces,” he said.
Under the modernisation plan, the union government had taken steps to equip its paramilitary forces with new weapons and equipment and would continue to do so, the ministry said in a statement.
Referring to the modernisation scheme of state police forces, the home minister said that the plan only provides a helping hand to the states to build better police stations, provide modern weapons and communication systems to their forces.
“A lot more needs to be done by the states on their own, as the requirement is huge.”
Those present at Friday’s meeting included Minister of State for Home Mullappally Ramachandran, Home Secretary G.K. Pillai and Secretary (Border Management) A.E. Ahmad.
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Tags: budget allocation, chief ministers, constables, consultative committee, high priority, home minister, home ministry, intelligence officers, internal security, modernisation plan, new security, paramilitary forces, police forces, police stations, policemen, policewomen, state budgets, state governments, union government, union territories
