SC asks 12 states for roadmap to fill vacancies in police

The Supreme Court today asked 12 states including Maharashtra and Assam to give roadmaps on filling up of vacancies at various levels in their police forces.
A bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justice D Y Chandrachud, which had recently passed orders asking states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to fill up such vacancies to ensure proper policing, directed the remaining 12 states to take a cue from its directions and give their proposals within two weeks.
"We have passed orders for filling up vacancies in other states. The nature of the order is known. You peruse the orders and file affidavits," the bench said.

The states which have to give roadmaps now, include Maharashtra, Assam, Odisha, Delhi, Manipur and Tripura.
The bench posted the matter after two weeks for passing of formal orders in this regard.
The apex court was hearing a 2013 petition filed by advocate Manish Kumar claiming that law and order situation in the country was deteriorating due to a large number of vacancies in police services at all levels across all states.

The court has been monitoring the filling up of the vacancies in each state and asked the state governments to submit their roadmaps.
The court has so far accepted the roadmaps of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. It had earlier rejected the one submitted by Bihar government and had summoned its top officials with a revised proposal.

On May 4, Gujarat government had sought time till August 2018, owing to assembly elections in the state this year, to fill up over 11,000 vacancies in its police force.
The bench had accepted the roadmap given by Gujarat and had directed it to complete the recruitment process by August 31 next year.
The apex court had on May 3 accepted the roadmap of the Jharkhand government for filling up vacancies of over 10,000 constables, 3017 sub-inspectors and 72 deputy superintendents of police and directed the state authorities to strictly adhere to the time-line.
It had on April 24 directed the Uttar Pradesh government to fill over 1.5 lakh police vacancies in fours years, saying this will help in dealing with the law and order problem.

It had also directed the governments of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to fill up about 45,000 such vacancies in a time- bound manner, while expressing dissatisfaction with the responses of West Bengal in the matter.
The apex court had directed the home secretaries of three states -- Haryana with 15,163 police vacancies, Madhya Pradesh (14,729) and Chhattisgarh (12,638) -- to submit their roadmaps.