In order to collect integrated information about the village and check the crime rate and other social evils in rural areas, the Jagtial district police launched the ambitious ‘village police diary,’ which would map the entire details of a particular village.
Taking advantage of the availability of village police officers (VPO), Superintendent of Police B. Anantha Sharma conceived the idea to collect complete information about a village. Incidentally, Nizamabad MP K. Kavitha had launched the collection of information from Bheerpur village, the native of Maoist supremo Muppala Laxman Rao alias Ganapathi last week.
Mr. Sharma launched the programme at his adopted Mothe village in Jagtial rural mandal on Wednesday. Inspired by the concept, Collector A. Sharath also assured to provide the assistance of the Village Revenue Officer (VRO) and village secretary to VPOs for the collection of information from all the 346 villages in the district, which would later be computerised.
The village police diary, a 140-page booklet, would have information such as village boundary, religious structures, educational institutes, habitations, details about the villagers, migrant population, village traditions and customs, area of cultivation and crops cultivated, banks, post offices, cellular phone towers, etc. The SP said the diary was completely different from the integrated household survey. “In the police diary, we are collecting information about the crimes that have taken place, criminal history of locals, persons with bad characters, implementation of government welfare schemes, strength of government officials such as teachers, and revenue officials such as village servant, VROs, and VRAs, among others.”
The diary would also collect information about the extremist offences that took place in the village, surrendered extremists, underground extremists, extremists killed in encounters, and details of militants. It would also have information pertaining to child marriages, child labour, practices of sorcery, untouchability, and juvenile offences.
The police would also collect information about government employees from the village, youth who joined the armed and police forces, and youth showing interest to join armed forces and other government services. The collection of A to Z information would be completed within a month’s time. The village police diary would act as a ready reckoner for police officials and elected representatives to take appropriate measures for the development of the villages.
