Bihar, UP placed at the bottom of SMART policing index

Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are placed at the bottom of a 'SMART' policing index while Andhra Pradesh and Telangana topped the list prepared by a private policing watchdog 'Indian Police Foundation' (IPF) led by former IPS officers like Prakash Singh and N Ramachandran.

The 'IPF Smart Policing Survey 2021: Index of Public Perceptions and Citizen Satisfaction', released on Monday, said a majority of the citizens -- 66.93% of 1.61 lakh surveyed -- believe that the police across the country are doing their job well.

The survey was conducted to gauge public perception about the quality of policing in the country and level of public trust in police.

According to the survey, Andhra Pradesh (8.11) was at the top of IPD SMART Policing Index followed by Telangana (8.10), Assam (7.89), Kerala (7.53) and vSikkim (7.18) while Karnataka was found at 14th position with a score of 6.69.

At the bottom was Bihar (5.74), Uttar Pradesh (5.81), Chhattisgarh (5.93), Jharkhand (6.07) and Punjab (6.07).

The IPF survey report said that it has an impressive sample size of 1.61 lakh but highlighted that the distribution of the samples was "skewed with sizable variations between states and union territories".

However, IPF Chairperson Singh said, social scientists and data experts from IIT-Kanpur and TISS, Mumbai were involved in analysing the data.

The survey was conducted following Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulating SMART Policing while addressing the Conference of Directors General of Police in 2014. SMART policing envisaged systemic changes to transform the police to be: Strict and Sensitive, Modern and Mobile, Alert and Accountable, Reliable and Responsive and Tech-savvy and Trained.

"We felt it was good time to look at the achievement of the strategy and analyse the Prime Minister's vision,"IPF president Ramachandran told a press conference.

Ramachandran said while around 67% people expressed satisfaction with police, almost one-third of the respondents were not happy with law enforcers and it is important for police to understand where they stand while consolidating the positives.

To a specific point on police sensitivity, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Assam in that order topped the list while Bihar and UP were at the bottom. When it comes to perception on strictness and good behaviour, the toppers were the same while Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar were at the bottom.

On access to police and responsiveness, Chhattisgarh and Bihar were at the bottom while Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Assam topped the list. UP and Punjab were at the bottom when it came to helpful and friendly police while Bihar and Chhattisgarh lagged behind adopting technology. The score of UP and Bihar on fair, unbiased and lawful policing was also very low.