Bangalore DGP promises people-friendly initiatives; plans are already in place

Updates on any complaint that you have lodged with the police will now reach you by means of SMS. Alerts on every step of progress, such as investigation status, arrest of the accused, filing of charge sheets, etc will be sent to your cell phone. Although this initiative was planned much earlier, it has been pending due to technical glitches.

“Owing to some technical issues in sending bulk SMS from each police station, we were not able to get connected with the victims. This will soon be rectified once the system in place,” said director general of police Ajai Kumar Singh.

A circular will be issued to each police unit, including the district heads and commissioners of Bangalore, Mysore, Hubli-Dharwar and Mangalore for implementing the system as early as possible.
Detailing other initiatives by the state police, Singh revealed that there has been reluctance on the part of the state government in increasing the staff strength across the state.

“The staff crunch has had a negative impact that slowed down effective patrolling in the state.  However, this does not mean all police stations are short-staffed. We had also made plans to identify 50 citizens from each police station limits to take their services during emergencies. This also suffered because of shortage of staff,” he said.

The government, on the other hand, has argued that the state has already reached a national average of 152 police personnel for a population of 1 lakh. “But this is not true for police stations across the state. In some units, it is far below the national average,” he said.

Besides, there is a pending proposal before the government to set up 168 police stations across the state.

A circular has already been issued to adopt one village  or wars under each police station.

“We will pursue the district heads of police force and commissioners of police in four cities to immediately start the initiative,” he added.

The top cop also pointed out that about 35 per cent of the policemen are facing housing shortage, which has adversely affected their performance at work.

“This has to be addressed soon to effectively utilise resources,” he said.

He also asserted that the department will personally watch over the training and deployment of security guards by private security agencies. “We have given them complete guidelines on the training that needs to be imparted to private security guards. They should be trained by institutes authorised by the state police,” he said.