Expressing the difficulties involved in filling up all the 16,838 vacant posts of police constables and sub-inspectors in one ago, the State government on Wednesday requested the court to grant time till March 2022 to fill up the posts in five phases instead of the deadline of December 31, 2019 set by the court in its July 19 order.
In an affidavit, an Under Secretary of the Home Department (Police Services) gave an undertaking that 5,531 posts (346 sub-inspectors and 5,185 constables) would be filled by November this year, and 451 posts of sub-inspectors would be filled up by December this year. Another lot of 615 posts of sub-inspectors and 4,540 posts of constables would be filled by March 2020. As many as 592 posts of sub-inspectors and 4,000 constables would be recruited by March 2021, and the remaining 543 posts of sub-inspectors and 566 constables would be filled by March 2022.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Mohammad Nawaz accepted the undertaking and directed that the first two phases of recruitment should be completed by December this year as per the assurance. Also, the Bench sought details about vacancies in the posts of assistant sub-inspectors, deputy superintendents of police, etc. The Bench was hearing a PIL petition initiated suo motu on the direction of the apex court to monitor filling up vacancies in the Police Department.
Recruitment process
The government had explained to the court that the process of recruiting constables and sub-inspectors involves conduct of physical tests, written examination and interview, and this process, from the date of issuance of notification of inviting applications till the publication of provisional selection list takes six months. And three more months are required to publish final selection list by conducting medical examination, police verification, and document verification of provisionally selected candidates.
The government also said that the Police Department has the capacity to train 600 sub-inspectors and 6,000 constables at a time, and recruiting personnel beyond this capacity would pose administrative difficulties.
