Police still have 22% vacancies

 Police forces recruited close to two lakh people in 2016, but the vacancies still constituted around 22%, a latest government report has said.

While the sanctioned strength for police forces in states have risen to 24.66 lakh in 2016, there are only 19.26 lakh people in place leaving a gap of 5.38 lakh or 21.8%.

The number of vacancies is down from 5.49 lakh in 2015 when there were 22.80 lakh sanctioned positions. There were 17.31 lakh personnel in 2015 as against 17.21 lakh personnel in 2014 and 17.22 lakh in 2013.

The 'Data on Police Organisations 2017' report released recently showed that there is some improvement in the strength of police forces compared to previous years as 1.94 lakh were added in 2016. In earlier years, the increase was in thousands only.

However, the vacancies among constables and head constables that accounts for 81% of the total vacancies has dampened the efforts to drastically improve the police-population ratio. Of the vacancies, the highest is in constabulary - 4.36 lakh vacancies as compared to 4.73 lakh in 2015.

As per the sanctioned strength, India will have 193 police personnel for every one lakh population, while it has only 151 as of now with the vacancies. The  standard set by the United Nations is way above at 220 police per lakh population. In 2015, the actual police-population proportion was 137 policemen for one lakh people.

Uttar Pradesh continued to have the highest number of vacancies, but the situation has worsened in the biggest state. While there were 1.81 lakh vacancies in 2015, it now has risen to 2.14 lakh.

Karnataka has something to cheer as the vacancies have come down to 2,3910 from 39,276 in 2015. In 2014, there were 33,307 vacancies.

West Bengal, ranked second, has vacancies of 38,580, up from 2015's 33,630. Bihar, Gujarat and Jharkhand were other toppers.

In the state intelligence apparatus, there is a vacancy in 10,828 posts compared to 9,486 the previous year. The report said 90% of these vacancies are in the lower ranks between constables and inspectors.

There are 8,156 vacancies as against 5,361 in the Special Task Forces (STF) formed in the states to fight insurgents and terrorists. While the sanctioned strength is 29,801, the actual strength is 21,645.