SHILLONG, July 13: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Wednesday announced a flurry of initiatives to better the services provided by the police and upgrade its requirements.
Briefing media persons after a conference with top officials at the police headquarters on Wednesday, he said the state government will provide new vehicles and computers to all the 76 police stations, cranes and ambulances to high traffic zones and accident-prone zones in the districts and 60 motorcycles for the monitoring of traffic in East Khasi Hills district.
He said the government will create the Police Infrastructure Renovation Fund for the repair, renovation and improvement of police infrastructure.
Sangma also said the government will create and sanction offices for SPs in the districts that do not have the provision and take up housing projects for constables, sub-inspectors and deputy superintendents of police phase-wise and on a case-to-case basis.
He added that the government will initiate the Chief Minister’s Police Medal and the Disaster Response Medal this year.
On police modernisation, he said it is a continuous process and there is no scale to say how much has been completed.
“We discussed militancy along with other law-and-order issues. The districts are more or less peacefully and no specific underground incidents or activities have been reported,” Sangma said. Director-General of Police L.R. Bishnoi said directions have been given at all levels to respect human rights and any case of violation will be dealt with at the earliest.
He said directions have been issued from the headquarters that human rights should be respected at every level from the thana to the district. No complaints of rights violations have been received at the headquarters, he added.
No issue with recruitment system: CM
Sangma said there is no issue with the recruitment process and a few departments which have completed the roster system are going ahead with the process.
“There is no issue with going ahead with the appointments and the only condition set is that the roster system has to be in place,” he said.
Stating that the court has clearly said recruitment can be done following the roster system, he said: “The system is at a different level for each department and hence there cannot be one yardstick or solution for every department that has completed the roster system for recruitment.”
Bigger departments have been finding it difficult to find the records, resulting in the delay in recruitment, Sangma said.
Admonished by the High Court of Meghalaya, the state cabinet had approved the roster system for the implementation of the reservation policy in the state.
The high court had in April granted three weeks’ time to the state government to introduce the roster system. It stayed all recruitment processes until the state government put the roster system in place.
