Punjab govt to fill 4,000 police vacancies

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today ordered immediate filling up of 4,000 vacancies, across the ranks, in the police department.
He also directed the department to ensure that every year 2,000 police personnel are recruited so as to fill the vacancies arising due to the routine retirement of policemen, an official spokesperson said.
Chairing a meeting of the top Home and Police department officials here, the chief minister also issued instructions to ensure that all vacancies in the vital police department, which is crucial to maintaining law and order in the state, be filled up on priority and on a regular basis.

Expressing concerns over the shortage of policemen for law and order duty, Singh, who has already initiated reforms in the department including diversion of police personnel from VIP duty, warned that his government would brook no delay in filling up of the vacancies.
Timely recruitment, said the Chief Minister, would also help in generating employment for youths in the state.
His government was committed to providing jobs for the unemployed youth, with at least one job in each household, as promised in the run-up to the assembly polls.

"In the meeting, he also reviewed the progress on territorial restructuring of the police stations in the wake of the abolition of the halqa in-charge system, which the state cabinet had earlier approved, an official spokesperson said.

The Chief Minister directed the officials to expedite the restructuring process of the police stations to delink them from the assembly constituencies and unshackle the force from the political strangle-hold, created by the previous SAD-BJP government.
He stressed on the need to free the police from any kind of political or other interference in their functioning.
The Chief Minister also directed the officials to ensure that police officials are allowed a free hand to work within the ambit of the law, while also taking care to ensure that no vindictive action is resorted to by the cops at any level, right from the lowest rung at the police stations.

The Department of Home is already working on a detailed proposal for police reforms, in the light of the Supreme Court directives, as laid down in the case of Parkash Singh and others, and also in view of the poll promises made by the Congress in Punjab, said the spokesperson.