LWE-hit States fighting Maoists with depleted police force

Three lakh positions lying vacant in nine States

Shortage of almost three lakh police personnel in nine Left wing extremism (LWE) affected States is jeopardising the fight against Maoists, who continue to target police and people with more lethality as recently seen in two attacks, the first in Chhattisgarh where senior State Congress leaders were gunned down and the killing of Pakur Superintendent of Police in Jharkhand.

Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh had 2.5 lakh vacant positions of head constables and constables, while 50,000 posts of inspectors and sub-inspectors need to be filled.

Similarly, these States also need over 1,000 Additional Superintendents of Police and Deputy SPs.

The highest number of shortage in police force is in Uttar Pradesh (1.8 lakh personnel), followed by Andhra Pradesh (30,000), West Bengal (29,000), Bihar (16,000), Chhattisgarh (13,000), Jharkhand (10,000), Madhya Pradesh (6,000) and Odisha (2,000).

Notably, in Maharashtra, there are 379 various vacant positions in just two LWE-hit districts of Gadchiroli and Gondia.

At last month’s Chief Ministers’ conference on internal security, Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told these States that they need to fill these vacancies and that the Centre cannot always fulfil their demands for increasing the deployment of paramilitary forces.

Currently, over 80,000 personnel, mainly from the CRPF (66 battalions), the BSF (12 battalions) and the ITBP (five battalions), are deployed in the LWE-hit States.

A recent internal MHA note sent to these States says, “Huge vacancies in police administrative set-up and large scale absenteeism have been reported from the LWE-affected areas. These are indicative of poor presence of government machinery in these areas. This further alienates people and renders the entire exercise of countering futile. Therefore, all these vacancies especially of lower level functionaries need to be filled up on priority.”

‘Relax recruitment norms’

For speedy recruitment, the MHA told these States to relax certain recruitment norms and give preference to locals, who can be appointed on contract basis.

“Schemes for incentivising the officials posted in these difficult areas may be put in place at the earliest,” the note said.

Further, the MHA asked these States to deploy their best officers to lead operations in the affected districts and also create the ‘special forces’ on the lines of the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh and improve their intelligence wings.

“The State governments need to ensure that the police should play a more proactive role in understanding intelligence-based anti-Naxal operations by special forces,” the MHA note said.

Asking all State governments to prepare plans of action to completely clear Naxals from less/moderately affected districts by 2013 end, the note added: “The best officers should be posted as SPs in the worst-affected districts. This aspect should be given the highest priority. The SPs should be the nodal points of operations. The resources should be optimally allocated for this purpose and district SPs made accountable to accomplish this task.”