Parliamentary panel asks to disincentivise states that do not equip police stations with vehicles, phones

Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab are sensitive border states but 148 of its police stations have no telephone while 53 have no wireless sets or mobile phones. Naxal-affected Andhra Pradesh has 135 police stations without a vehicle.

Across India, there are 257 police stations which have no vehicle, 638 with no telephone and 143 with no wireless set or mobile phone as on 1 January, 2020, though many of the states have been rewarded with better performance incentives in 2018-19 for carrying out modernisation of police forces, the Ministry of Home Affairs has told a Parliamentary panel.

This has prompted the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs headed by senior Congress MP Anand Sharma to ask the MHA to advise states to immediately equip their police stations with adequate vehicles and communication devices else it may lead to disincentivization of modernisation grants from the Centre.

"In the 21st century India, there are police stations without telephones or proper wireless connectivity especially in many sensitive states like Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Punjab, particularly in view of the fact that some of these states had been rewarded with better performance incentives in the year 2018-19. Further, a very sensitive border Union Territory like Jammu and Kashmir also has a sizable number of police stations which do not have telephones and wireless sets," the panel said.

According to the report 'Police -- Training , Modernisation, Reforms' tabled in Parliament on Thursday, 79 out of 235 police stations in Jammu and Kashmir did not have telephone while 17 did not have wireless or mobile and for Punjab, it was 69 and 36 respectively. Arunachal Pradesh has 141 police stations with no telephones and Odisha has 38 with no wireless.

The panel was also of the view that a cluster of police stations in a state should be linked to a particular university or college, as it was important for the police to understand the social, cultural, legal, political, economic and technological changes happening in the society.

"This can be done with the regular interaction of the law enforcement agencies with the intelligentsia...This will lead to a collaboration with the scholars, particularly in the departments of sociology, philosophy, political science to develop soft skills and bring a behavioural change in the police personnel. Further, the academicians and scholars who are specialists on gender and criminal issues should be invited to be a part of the training syllabus," it said.

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