The Asian Age: Mumbai: Tuesday, March 11, 2014.
A recent
Right to Information (RTI) query has revealed that there were 1,291 vacancies
in Mumbai police ranging from the rank of police sub-inspector to additional
commissioner of police till January 31, 2014. So far as the rank of police
jawans is concerned, there were 1,162 posts vacant from the rank of police
constables to asst sub-inspectors.
According to
a reply to the RTI query, filed by Pune based activist Vihar Durve, sanctioned
posts in the Mumbai police has gone down slightly compared to the last three
years. In 2011, a total of 44,999 posts were sanctioned in Mumbai police and
39,720 were working across all ranks. However, these sanctioned posts went down
to 44,971 in the current year i.e. 2014 and 42,201 police personnel were working
as on January 30, 2014. The RTI findings further say that currently one post of
additional commissioner of police, five posts of DCP, 44 posts of ACP, 34 posts
of PI and 234 posts of API need to be filled up.
When
contacted, IPS officer P.K. Jain, who recently resigned from service, alleging
that the government did not pay proper attention to the police force, said that
in any given case the sanctioning strength always goes up. He said,
“Sanctioning strength depends on the population, law and order, crime figures
etc. and since everything has gone up, so should sanctioning strength.”
A senior
police officer, on the condition of anonymity, said that this is one of the
reasons why the conviction rate has been dipping and has reached the lowest
level. This encourages criminals to carry out more offences, especially against
women such as rape, molestation, dowry, chain snatching etc.” He added, “These
vacancies should be filled on an urgent basis as the police force is under
tremendous pressure.
Explaining
the reason, former commissioner of Mumbai police, Julio Ribeiro said, “This
could be due to the departmental delay in issuing orders to add the strength, otherwise
sanctioning strength should go up year-on-year.”
Amitabh
Rajan, additional chief secretary did not respond to calls or messages.
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