Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday ordered immediate steps to fill the 4000 existing police vacancies across ranks, while directing the department to ensure that 2000 police personnel are recruited every year to fill the vacancies arising annually out of the routine retirement of cops.Chairing a meeting of top Home and Police department officials here, the Chief Minister issued strict instructions for ensuring that all vacancies in the vital police department, which is crucial to maintaining law and order in the state, be filled up on priority, on a regular basis. Expressing concern over the shortfall of police personnel for law and order duty, the Chief Minister, who has already initiated sweeping reforms in the police department including diversion of cops from VIP duty, warned that his government would brook no delay in the matter of filling up police vacancies.Policing is an essential service needed to maintain peace and harmony in the state and could not be compromised with, at any cost, said Captain Amarinder, reiterating his government’s commitment to reform the beleaguered police force, as promised in the Congress poll manifesto.Timely recruitment, said the Chief Minister, would also help in generating the much-needed employment for youth in the state. His government, said Captain Amarinder, 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.
The meeting 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 disclosed.The Chief Minister directed the officials to expedite the process of restructuring the police stations to delink them from the assembly constituencies and unshackle the force from the political stranglehold created by the previous SAD-BJP government. He stressed 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 & Ors, and also in view of the poll promises made by the Congress in Punjab, said the spokesperson.The high-level meeting was attended by Media Advisor to Chief Minister Raveen Thukral, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) N.S Kalsi, Principal Secretary to CM Tejveer Singh, DGP Suresh Arora, ADGP (Provisioning & IT) VK Bhawra, ADGP (Admn.) Iqbalpreet Singh Sahota and IG (Headquarter) Jatinder Singh Aulakh.