State governments are not giving “desired priority” to their police forces while allocating funds in their budgets, putting a burden on the Centre to increase the strength of paramilitary forces, Home Minister P. Chidambaram has said.
“Policing is not given the desired priority by the states while allocating funds in their budgets. The Centre has been forced to substantially increase the strength of its paramilitary forces because the state forces could not be augmented and modernised to the desired level,” he said.
His comments at the meeting of the consultative committee of his ministry last night come just ahead of Chief Ministers’ Conference on Internal Security which is likely to discuss issues of terrorism, naxalism, insurgency and modernisation of police and intelligence infrastructure in the country.
The Home Minister said, “Under the plan of modernisation of police force, the Centre has taken major steps to equip its paramilitary forces with new weapons and equipment and would continue to do so. But, a lot more needs to done.”
“The scheme only provides a helping hand to the state to build better police stations and provide modern weapons and communication systems to their forces,” Chidambaram said referring to the centrally-sponsored Scheme of Modernisation of Police Forces.
Chidambaram called upon the states to give high priority to the strengthening of their police forces in budget allocation.
“The first duty of the government is to provide security to its people without which no development is possible,” he said adding that law and order and police being a state subject it is the primary responsibility of states to strengthen the police forces.
Chidambaram said, “A lot more needs to be done by the states on their own as the requirement (for police modernisation) is huge. There is a need for the states to quickly recruit sufficient number of policemen to fill the existing vacancies and bring about the desired expansion of their forces.”
