31,694 posts vacant in police dept, says DyCM

Of the 1.26 lakh posts in the Police department, as many as 31,694 posts were vacant, said Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara on Tuesday.

Replying to K P Nanjundi (BJP) in the Legislative Council, Parameshwara, who also holds the Home portifolio, said that though measures were being taken to fill up the vacancies, it was posing as an uphill task as nearly 4,000 to 5,000 police officials retired every year. He also said there was an accumulation of backlog as there were no recruitments between 2008 and 2013. “I don’t want to play the blame game, but if the vacancies had been filled during that period, we would not be facing the situation we are today.”

Parameshwara said that in the last five years, the government had filled 26,188 posts, while the recruitment process for the years 2016-17 and 2017-18 (12,189 posts) was on.

He also said that police personnel could be absorbed into the department after they were trained. However, Karnataka had only 10 training schools, in addition to temporary schools, where only a few hundreds could be trained over a period of time.

Orderly system

When Nanjundi asked the Minister about the prevalence of the orderly system in the department, Parameshwara said that the government was yet to completely abolish the system. He said that the orderlies, who were now being called ‘followers’, would be removed in a phased manner. Parameshwara said that there were around 3,000 orderlies in the state.