A central scheme to modernise the police force has come a cropper, particularly in states where Maoists are strong, an audit by the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) has found.
A central scheme to modernise the police force has come a cropper, particularly in states where Maoists are strong, an audit by the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) has found.
The home ministry, which placed the report before parliament, said the CAG found serious lapses on the part of states in tackling insurgency. The shortcomings were noticed on four heads — mobility, use of funds, weapons, communication and training.
States were found to be complacent and lacking foresight due to which funds remained unused or were wasted. In some cases where a state had enough money at its disposal, it was unable to think up a scheme and use the money. Some cases showed a lack of foresight.
Many police stations in Maoist strongholds did not have four-wheelers, yet the money were not used to buy this basic. In others, vehicles bought without keeping in mind the availability of drivers are gathering dust.
Though the CAG report seemed to indicate that the availability of Central funds for the state police has made a difference, results were not as good as one would expect. For instance, certain states were slow in using the funds, because of which a lot of the money remained unutilised. Orissa and Jharkhand, the states where Maoists dominate, were the biggest laggards, not using 30% and 40% of funds available to them.
On communication and training fronts too, police were found to be lacking ammo — they did not have the weapons to counter well-equipped insurgents.
Alarmed by these developments, the home ministry has introduced a system of concurrent auditing of funds released to states to ensure their proper use. In addition, home secretaries of ‘sluggish’ states have been asked to submit documents to show that the money had not been diverted to pay salaries.
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