HT Bureau
GUWAHATI, April 27: Chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma asked the superintendents of police to work proactively for improving the law and order parameters for overall improvement in the law and order situation in the state.
In a virtual conferencing with senior officials of the Assam Police and SPs of districts at the conference hall of Assam House here on Thursday, Sarma said that evaluation of the SPs performance will be made in the upcoming SPs conference to be held at Bongaigaon in the second or third week of June.
50 indices from the last four SPs conference will be marked out as yardstick for evaluation of the SPs performance appraisal report which will form the basis of their Annual Confidential Report.
“Thrust will be to improve upon various indices on the law and order front and to take it to the next level in the next six months,” the chief minister said, adding that the poor performing districts have to improve drastically if the state has to improve considerably on the law and order scenario.
The chief minister discussed threadbare backlog of pending cases, drug related crimes, cyber crimes, crimes against women, oil theft cases and withdrawal of petty cases. He said that every SP will be given fixed reasonable targets to achieve and their performance will be evaluated on this basis.
The chief minister underscored the need for reducing crime against women in Guwahati and other places by adopting the best practices of West Bengal, Karnataka and other states.
“Concerted efforts must be made to make our cities and towns safer for women,” he quipped.
Sarma directed principal secretary, Home and Political, Niraj Verma, present in the meeting, to initiate the process for recruitment of Public Prosecutors and Additional Public Prosecutors by August.
Sarma stressed on the need to hold crime conferences and encore meetings on containing drugs, inspection of police stations, being investigation officer in one or two cases and building good relations with the district judiciary.
Sarma instructed the DGP and other police higher ups to see whether the police officials are attending the physical fitness exercise, visiting the police stations, registering cases and bringing them to logical conclusion.
Emphasising on the fitness of the police personnel, the chief minister instructed the police top brass to cut the dead wood out of the police force – those who are habitual drinkers, excessively obese, and having corruption cases against them – by giving them either VRS or CRS compensation. Process is under way to give one-time compensation to around 250 such police personnel.
It was decided that for administrative convenience and to combat crime, East Guwahati Police District will have two more police districts. A notification to this effect will be issued by the Home and Political Department soon.
With a view to strengthening the police machinery for Guwahati city, four numbers of battalions situated in the capital city or its periphery will be made accessible to the police commissionerate.
The senior police officials gave a presentation on the pendency of crimes which has come down from 95,000 in 2021 to 55,000 in 2022; filing of chargesheet of over 97 per cent cases of child marriage cases; dropping of petty cases under investigation; lowering of conviction rate in POSCO and NDPS cases; reduction in crime against women from 73,474 cases in May 2021 to 12,730 cases as on March, 2023 with a total of nine districts registering zero backlogs; bringing down of road accidents through geo tagging of accident prone areas during peak hours and installation of CCTVs in police stations.
Special DGP, Harmeet Singh apprised the chief minister that a portal named Assam Police Seva Setu with altogether 24 services, including filing of e-FIR will be launched soon. This portal will be linked to ePrastuti of the Home department and RTPS. The chief minister asked the officials to ensure that proper training is imparted to the OCs for obtaining optimal results.
The chief minister directed the DGP and other senior police officials to start the process for forming of ‘nagarik samitees’ by May this year.
The almost one and a half hour long meeting was attended by minister for information and public relations, Pijush Hazarika, DGP, GP Singh, principal resident commissioner, Rajeev Chandra Joshi and principal secretary to CM, Samir Kumar Sinha.
