GUWAHATI: The Assam police have been ranked third in quality of policing, a survey by the Indian Police Foundation (IFP) has said.
According to the ‘IPF Citizen Satisfaction Survey on Smart Policing, 2021’, the popular satisfaction with the quality of policing is highest in three States each in southern and north-eastern India while Gujarat is the only State from the rest of the country among the top seven.
Andhra Pradesh tops the list followed by Telangana, Assam, Kerala, Sikkim, Mizoram and Gujarat, the survey said.
The IPF report, released on November 18, said the survey is aimed at gauging public perceptions about the quality of policing in India and the level of public trust in the force.
A total of 1,61,192 people were interviewed for the survey and 64% of the responses were received online and 36% gathered offline. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana accounted for 56.48% of the total number of responses.
The questionnaire covered 10 areas of policing comprising six indicators of competence, three indicators of values and one on public trust. The scores, indicative of the levels of citizen satisfaction, were set on a scale of 1 to 10.
Andhra Pradesh (8.11), Telangana (8.10), Assam (7.89), Kerala (7.53) and Sikkim (7.18) emerged as the top five States in the IFP Smart Policing Index 2021.
Bihar (5.74), Uttar Pradesh (5.81), Chhattisgarh (5.93), Jharkhand (6.07) and Punjab (6.07) featured at the bottom of the list.
The smart policing idea was introduced at the conference of the Directors-General of Police of the States and Central police organisations held in Guwahati in 2014.
It envisaged systemic changes to transform the Indian police to be “strict and sensitive, modern and mobile, alert and accountable, reliable and responsive, techno-savvy and trained”.
Experts from institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai were involved in the survey, a statement from IFP said.
