Nongpok Sekmai police station in Manipur’s Thoubal district has been selected as the best police station in the country, fresh rankings for 2020 announced by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Thursday said.
The other nine top police stations are AWPS-Suramangalam in Tamil Nadu’s Salem city, Kharsang in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang, Jhilmili (Bhaiya Thana) at Surajpur in Chhattisgarh, Sanguem in South Goa, Kalighat in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Pakyong in Sikkim’s East District, Kanth in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad district, Khanvel in Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Jammikunta Town police station in Telangana’s Karimnagar district.
"The government of India selects best performing police stations out of 16,671 in the country every year to “incentivise more effective functioning of police stations and bring healthy competition among them,” the MHA said.
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“The ranking process commenced with shortlisting of the best performing police stations in each State on the basis of addressing property offence, crime against women, crime against weaker sections, missing persons, unidentified found person and unidentified dead bodies. The last parameter has been introduced this year,” MHA said in a statement.
The statement said that the rankings were in accordance with the directions of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Directors General of Police conference in 2015. He had directed that parameters should be laid down for grading police stations and assessing their performance based on feedback.
‘Challenging circumstances’ADVERTISEMENT
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This year’s survey for best police stations was conducted under challenging circumstances by the MHA. It was difficult to access police stations located in remote areas during the COVID-19 pandemic due to various restrictions on movement, the MHA said.
“The Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah has said that a vast majority of police stations short-listed from the thousands of police stations in the country are police stations located in small towns and rural areas. This is also true for those police stations which have been ranked among the top 10. This indicates that while availability of resources is important, more important is the dedication and sincerity of our police personnel to prevent and control crime and serve the nation,” it said.
The number of police stations selected initially from each State comprised three from States with more than 750 police stations, two from all other States and Delhi and one each from Union Territories.
In all, five police stations were selected for next stage of the ranking process.
“In the final stage, 19 parameters were identified to evaluate the standards of service delivery and identify techniques of improvement in policing. This part constituted 80% weightage in overall scoring,” it said. The balance 20% was based on infrastructure of the police station and access of personnel and feedback of citizens. “The categories of citizens included were from nearby residential areas, nearby markets and citizens leaving police stations. Citizens who were approached for feedback included 4,056 respondents, covering approximately 60 people at each shortlisted location,” the MHA said.