How are we running our police stations?

Sarkari Secrets

Earlier this month, the Union Government was questioned in parliament about the current status of women’s representation in the police services. Both Houses were told, the Home Ministry has repeatedly written to the States and Union Territories (UTs) since 2013, to increase their numbers to 33% of the total strength. However, at the beginning of 2023, there were only 2.6 lakh women police personnel across the country. This is a mere 9.51% of the national figure of 27.23 lakh sanctioned posts. Almost 25% of them are serving in just two states – Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. Whether there has been any improvement in 2024 will be known only next year, when the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) publishes statistical data about various aspects of the police organisation across the country.

There are more norms for ensuring the representation of societal diversity in the police services. These include recruiting more Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs, transgenders, and religious minorities. BPR&D publishes some diversity data every year. However, for reasons unknown, it stopped publishing statistics about Muslim representation in the police services more than a decade ago.

That is not all. BPR&D has also not published the norms that must guide the establishment, staffing and resourcing of police stations which constitute the cutting-edge level of law enforcement. Serving and retired police officers and police reforms advocates have time and again talked about the urgency of revising these norms, in light of the myriad challenges to law-and-order maintenance and the prevention and investigation of crime. But non-specialist citizens like us are largely ignorant of even the existing norms. So, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)’s 2019 audit of the performance vis-à-vis manpower and logistics availability with the Delhi Police came as a pleasant surprise when I chanced upon the report on an idle weekend. One of the criteria used for this audit was BPR&D’s norms for staffing, the ideal size of the crime investigation team, the number and type of vehicles to be provided, and the physical infrastructure to be set up in police stations. However, the audit report did not mention the norms themselves in sufficient detail. A quick check of BPR&D’s website revealed only a document that contains the norms for modern police station buildings, nothing else.

Last month, I filed an RTI application with BPR&D referencing the CAG report and sought copies of documents containing: the norms for establishing police stations in urban and rural areas, the optimal human resource requirements for staffing them, the prescribed size of investigating teams, norms for the allotment of financial resources to the police station in general and the investigation team in particular, and the provision of motor vehicles and protective equipment for police personnel while on duty. Strangely, BPR&D replied that the information sought was not available with them. I was advised to contact the Delhi Police! So much for BPR&D’s compliance with the almost two-decade-old RTI Act which requires mandatory disclosure of the norms which guide the functioning of all public authorities, including the police.

Earlier this year, Bengaluru’s Police Commissioner lamented that the average number of police personnel across the city’s police stations was a meagre 162 whereas Mumbai and Delhi averaged more than 400. The CAG’s audit report states that BPR&D norms require at least 220 personnel in a police station where more than 500 IPC crimes are registered annually.

A micro-mission that was set up by BPR&D reported in 2016 that police stations in many states met their monetary requirements for buying stationery, feeding the arrestees held in custody, transporting the injured and deceased victims of crime, photographing the crime scene, photocopying and other expenses through “collections made from the local liquor mafia, land sharks and transporters”. Often, the complainants were asked to get stationery to initiate action on their complaints. The report labelled all these actions, “corrupt practices”.

So, BPR&D recommended the adoption of the financing model implemented in Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh where police stations in rural and urban areas are sanctioned a fixed sum of money every month to cover such expenditure. The sanctioned budget varies from Rs 10,000 to Rs 75,000 depending upon the State/UT and whether the police stations are in the rural or urban areas. BPR&D noted that regularising this good practice across the country would not cost more than a ‘paltry’ sum of Rs 15-20 crore per State/UT, annually. Karnataka began this good practice in 2009 and spends Rs 5-10 crore every year on investigation expenses. It has a dedicated account head in the annual police budget.

Whether BPR&D has included this recommendation in its norms for police stations is a mystery for all of us who seek more effective, accountable and citizen-friendly policing. Having filed an appeal against BPR&D’s reply, I am eagerly waiting for the sarkari secret to reveal itself.