More than 5 lakh vacancies exist in police forces

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday released data on police organisations as on January 1, 2019 which shows that actual strength of police force was less by almost 20 per cent compared to the sanctioned strength.

The Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR & D) has been publishing 'Data on Police Organizations' annually since 1986.

According to the data, 5,28,165 posts were vacant (armed, civil and reserved police) compared to the sanctioned strength.

The data shows that sanctioned police force (Civil, District Armed Reserve (DAR), Special Armed) is 25,95,435 out of which total actual police force (Civil, DAR and Special Armed) was 20,67,270.

The strength of women police force (Civil, DAR, Special Armed) is 1,85,696, which is 8.98 per cent of total strength.

Total sanctioned strength of CAPFs is almost 11 lakh but almost 10 lakh is the actual strength of CAPFs, according to the data.

"Data on police organizations as on January 1, 2018 was released by Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy on October 24, 2018. Simultaneously, the process for obtaining the data and preparation of "DoPO as on 01.01.2019" started and was completed by December 2019," a Home Ministry press release said.

The data says that almost 4.27 lakh CCTV cameras were available with police in states/UTs e and 2.04 lakh police vehicles were available in 16,587 police station and other units.

The population per police person (PPP) is 632 against sanctioned ratio of 503. Police population ratio (per lakh) was is 158.22 against sanctioned ratio of 198.65.