Still waiting to get your address proof verified for your passport application to be processed ? City Police Commissioner Raghavendra Auradkar has a reason for the delay: shortage of manpower. Mr. Auradkar said the police get nearly 19,000 verification requests each month.
During a symposium on ‘Crime and traffic in Bengaluru city’ organised by the Advocates’ Association, Bangalore here on Thursday, he said a minimum of one constable was required to go for the verification, that too during the weekends as people would not be at home during the weekdays.
The delay in police verification of address proof submitted by passport applicants is often blamed by the Regional Passport Office for the delay in issue of the documents.
Making a point that the delay in verifying passports was part of the larger problem of not having enough civil police, he said, “Out of the 9,585 sanctioned posts, there are 2,393 vacancies.” The scene was similar with the traffic police department too, he said.
Elaborating further, he said the city was far behind in the police to per lakh population ratio. “In New Delhi, there are 600 policemen per lakh population; in Mumbai 450, Hyderabad 350 and in Chennai 400. But in Bangalore, there are only 140 policemen per lakh people,” he said. Giving the breakup for the essential staff deployment with the available human resources, he said 75 cops were at the Chief Minister’s residence, while 450 were deployed for investigations.
In fact, there is even a shortage of drivers with no posts sanctioned for the Hoysala vans, which is why the department is forced to depute 300 policemen to drive the vans, he revealed.
Illnesses contribute further, he explained: “Nearly 30 per cent of the police staff suffers from high blood pressure and stress. Nearly 100 of our staff have suffered from stroke or spinal chord injuries, due to which we are forced to put them on control room duty.”
Home guards
Mr. Auradkar said that the police department had asked the government for 2,000 home guards who could supplement the civil police’s services.
Maintaining that the crime scene in the city was “not as bad as projected in the media,” he said the detection rate in Bangalore was also higher than the country’s 20 per cent average.
However, he confessed that the complexity and type of crime has been changing with the city’s growth, as has the number of crimes. Interestingly, crimes due to marital discord is on the rise, he said, attributing it to “ rising intolerance, stress and high ambitions.”
