State of the police: Situations vacant, from West Bengal to Mizoram

India is one of the most under-policed nations in the world as state governments fail to recruit personnel

Union Home Minister Amit Shah attended the 56th Raising Day Parade of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) in Tamil Nadu last week to announce the recruitment of over 100,000 youth in the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF). He had said that 14,000 positions were filled in CISF last year while 50,000 more youth were being recruited in all the CAPFs.

 

Earlier, he had stated at a meeting of the parliamentary consultative committee of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) that 243,000 CAPF personnel were recruited in the past five years. However, recent cases have laid bare the deficiencies in India’s criminal justice paradigm.

 

A report by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) revealed that ten states had a vacancy rate of more than 25 per cent in their state police strength as on January 1, 2023. Vacancy rate at the all-India level was 21.35 per cent.

 

West Bengal had a vacancy rate of 39.42 per cent, highest across all states and union territories, followed by Mizoram (35.06 per cent) and Haryana (31.86 per cent). Two of the three most populous states of India – Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – had high vacancy rates of 28.88 per cent and 25.71 per cent, respectively.

 

Globally, India remains one of the most under-policed nations. The United Nations (UN) recommends 222 police personnel per lakh population. However, India’s actual police per lakh people was merely 154.84 against the sanctioned police per lakh of population of 196.88. Advanced countries like the United States of America and European Union had even greater strength of police personnel with police per lakh of population of 351 and 344, respectively.