'States not giving CRPF proper accommodation'

There is "constant increase" in demand for CRPF deployment to tackle "all kinds of major as well as minor" law and order situations by states but when it comes to providing locations for their camps, states allocate "inadequate, unhygienic, insecure and poorly maintained" sites.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has raised the issue before a Parliamentary panel, which has suggested that the CRPF should consider withdrawing its troops from states where the latter has failed to provide basic infrastructure to its personnel.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs headed by former Home Minister P Chidambaram said the personnel are "compelled to live in sub-human conditions", which affects their "dignity, morale and motivation".

"There is an acute shortage of decent living conditions for the CRPF personnel as the state governments fail to provide basic infrastructure to them," the panel said adding the MHA should hire an outside agency to conduct surveys every six months among CRPF personnel deployed in the states regarding their living conditions.

If the State Governments are found to be lacking in providing adequate infrastructure and other facilities in accordance with the provisions of the Standard Operating Procedure (SO) framed by the MHA, it said, the Ministry must bring it to the notice of the respective state and first issue an advisory. "If the same is not acted upon within the stipulated time frame, the Ministry should consider withdrawing the deployed troops for violation of SOP conditions," it said.

The MHA informed the committee that there is a prescribed minimum scale of infrastructure for establishing battalion or company headquarters. This forms the pre-requisite for any new deployment in a state.

On the CISF, the MHA said it does not deploy any force in Public Sector Units (PSUs) if they do not provide accommodation to the personnel -- 55% barrack and 45% family accommodation on an average.

The panel also termed it "more worrying" a trend in BSF where the accommodation for gazetted-rank officers is at a higher level but that of non-gazetted ranks (up to Inspector-level personnel) is low.

It has found that a bulk of the shortage of houses in Type-II and Type-III (where personnel up to Inspector are allotted houses) that cater to the non-gazetted ranks of the force. "The Committee feels that a shortage of 47,128 houses in the Type-II category is especially worrisome asa even the pending construction projects may not be able to reduce it by any significant margin," it said.