Low police-to-people ratio impacting law and order situation in West Bengal, say experts
The Hindu
Calcutta High Court urges West Bengal government to recruit more police personnel due to shortage impacting law and order.
Highlighting the shortage of police personnel across several districts of the State, the Calcutta High Court has urged the West Bengal government to recruit more police personnel.
A Division Bench of the High Court on May 16, while releasing a petition seeking a probe by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the murder of two members of a family during the communal riots at Murshidabad last month, observed, “Now is the time to recruit sufficient police personnel. The number of police personnel in each district is less. The police force in Murshidabad is also very small.”
The development has triggered a debate on how the low police-to-people ratio in West Bengal is impacting the law and order situation, particularly when the State has been witnessing frequent communal flare ups.
The Ministry of Home Affairs, in a reply to the Lok Sabha in March 2023, pointed out that West Bengal has one of the lowest rates of police personnel per lakh population in the country at 97.66. The State was next only to Bihar, where the rate of police personnel per lakh population stood at 75.16, according to data on police organisations compiled by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) for the whole country as on January 1, 2022.
Experts and political observers point out that instead of appointing regular police personnel, the West Bengal government has been appointing civic police volunteers, a contractual workforce with lesser pay and virtually no training.
Often, the civic police volunteers are found to be violating the law instead of enforcing it. It was a former civic police volunteer who was convicted in the horrific rape and murder of a doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in April 2024. Only a few days ago, a civic volunteer of Pragati Maidan police station was arrested for allegedly stealing the uniform of an officer of Kasba police station and troubling residents, posing as a police officer.
West Bengal has two separate police establishments — Kolkata Police, and West Bengal police that operates independently. As per the data available in 2024, the approximate strength of the Kolkata Police is about 37,400, whereas the West Bengal police is about 79,024.
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