Restructuring Indian Police
This article explores the possible reforms that can be introduced at the police district level and below. In the first part it focuses on the police formations and in the second part it analyses the police support elements like SWAT, QRT & Armed Police and how these support units can be re-structured to aid the civil police.
RESTRUCTURING POLICE STATIONS
Just like the armed forces, the police force is also divided into various segments which form the police force of a state, when put together. The lowest formation being the beat chowki and the highest being the very obvious, police headquarters (PHQ). But the two crucial formations of a state police are the web of police stations (PS) and district police headquarters, so let’s discuss how a police station should be categorised. In an ideal scenario police stations should be divided on the area type (rural/urban) and population.
So, a police station in a rural set-up should cover between 50,000–75,000 people, we conclude with this number after considering logistics, communications, connectivity and financial burden a rural police station has to suffer. Some rural police stations don’t even have basic facilities which are required to run a police station like communication and transportation. Coming on to the urban set-up where the police stations are in a bit better shape than their rural counterparts but face different sets of problems, a police station in an urban set-up should cater to 2,00,000 people.
Police stations can be classified according to the population and resources can be allotted to them accordingly. The recommended grading criteria is as follows.
- CATEGORY 1 -50,000–75,000 (rural)
- CATEGORY 2 -75,00–1,00,000 (semi-urban)
- CATEGORY 3 -1,00,000–1,50,000 (semi-urban)
- CATEGORY 4 -1,50,000–2,00,000 (urban)
Furthermore, special status can be conferred to those police stations falling in border districts, naxal and terrorist infested areas. This helps in the identification of police stations which need extra manpower and special vehicles like bulletproof jeeps and mine-protected vehicles for their functioning.
Now the question arises, who gets to become the Station House Officer (SHO) aka ‘Bada Babu’ of these police stations. Keeping in mind the basic rules of man management, experience of the personnel, manpower shortages and cash-crunch, Category 1 & 2 police stations should be headed by a Senior SI as the police stations cover a relatively small population and are situated in rural areas whereas Category 3 & 4 should be headed by Inspectors. Currently, there are irregularities in the command of police stations but with the proposed grading system this problem might come to an end!
Most of the police stations across the nation barring a few are ill-equipped to handle law and order situations and conduct investigations, all because of non-availability of funds. In an ideal situation (provided, funds are allotted to the police department) we recommend that a police station should have a Detective Unit for the investigation of crimes, a Basic Forensics Team for the preservation of the crime scene and evidences and Law and Order Unit to maintain, as the name suggests, law and order and chart key patrolling routes in the area. Junior SIs and in some cases Senior SIs can lead these specialised departments.
It is important to note that the Basic Forensics Unit will be different from the District Forensics lab, as the former will not process or analyse the evidence, the job of the unit would be to safely and professionally extract and preserve the evidence and hand it over to the forensics lab. Clearly assigned duties within the police station would eliminate any chances of overlap, increasing the efficiency of the station.
RESTRUCTURING DISTRICT POLICE
As mentioned above, District police is one of the key formations of a police department. Below the District Police Headquarters (DHQ) which is headed by an SP, there are Police Circles, Police Sub-Divisions, Police Stations, Police Outposts (Rural/Town) and Beat Chowkis. The PSs are headed usually by Inspectors and in some cases Senior SIs, police circles are headed by cadres of State Police Services (SPS) known as Circle officers (CO). A sub-division is usually the entry post of an IPS officer, called the Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) and the post is headed by a DySP who could either hail from IPS or SPS.
PS or fondly known as Thanas are clubbed to form a police circle, circles are further clubbed to form Sub-divisions and all these form a Police district. But the problem arises with the irregularities with the layout and classification of Circles and Sub-divisions as there is no uniformity. Considering the workload and manpower shortages, we recommend that 3 PSs should form one Police Circle and 2 Police Circles should make 1 police sub-division. There cannot not be a set number of sub-divisions under a DHQ as that would be decided according to the size of a district.
The district HQ is led by a SP/SSP rank officer (equivalent to Lt.Col and Col., respectively) who again can be either from IPS or SPS. In some states like J&k and Kerala, due to the unique promotion policy, SIs have went on to become IPS and lead districts as SP/SSPs. We recommend that that the SP at District HQ should be backed by 3 Additional SPs (AdSP), who should be assigned to a specialised field like — law and order, administration and armoury, investigation and operations ( AdSP ops only in operationally active districts)
UNIFORMITY IN LOWER AND MID LEVEL OFFICERS OF A POLICE DISTRICT
In terms of officers at the cutting edge who are the pillars and the workhorses of any police department of India, there is no uniformity across states. The ranks below SP are as follows -
- Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI)
- Junior SI
- Senior SI
- Inspector
- Senior/Full Inspector
- Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP)
- Senior DySP
- Assistant SP
- Additional SP
These ranks should be institutionalised and be made uniform across India. As police is a state subject the responsibilities and decision making powers are vested with the state government, this gives rise to differences in ranks and structures among the various state police.
DEPLOYMENT OF QRT AND SWAT TEAMS
It would not be advisable for us to delve much into the manpower and strength of a police station on a public platform, but it should be noted that a PS is the core element for the maintenance of law and order in the area. For the same and better facilitation, the police station is further divided into beat chowkis and outposts. In our opinion, One Quick Response Team (QRT) should be attached to each PS to contain any misadventures by armed miscreants. Here we would like to tell you that there is a difference between QRT and SWAT teams, SWAT teams should only be attached to the DHQ and should be equipped with better weapons and imparted with advanced level training as compared to QRTs. Due to financial constraints (training cost, weapons cost & allowances) SWAT teams cannot be attached to all the PSs, hence a 6 member moderately armed and trained team can be attached to each PS which would provide quick armed support to the unarmed constables, beat chowkis, checkposts and outposts. This is modelled on the UK’s armed patrol cars model. The above mentioned SWAT teams can be changed according to the requirement i.e., Special Operations Group (SOG) for Kashmir and Special Action Team (SAT) for Naxal affected districts.
Each mid and senior level officer like SDPO, AdSP (Law and Order) and AdSP (operations) and Superintendent of Police (SP) should be provided with a SWAT/SOG/SAT team.
RESTRUCTURING ARMED RESERVE POLICE
A district police (civil) is always backed by armed reserves for the maintenance of law and order and VIP duties. Now it is important to know that there are 2 types of armed police reserves in India (state armed police and district armed reserve). The only difference between the two reserve units is of leadership, state armed police has a different command structure, where the wing is often headed by an ADG rank officer and the battalions are led by SP rank officers called Commandants. Whereas the district armed reserves fall directly under the command of the district SP/SSP. Unlike an army battalion which has 4 rifle companies (coy), a police reserve battalion has 7 rifle coy and 1 admin coy under it. These reserve battalions are deployed across the state according to the threats and requirements.
There are 2 types of deployments of armed reserve police in India, they are as follows -
- States with only state armed police and no district reserves like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, Punjab, Rajasthan etc.
- States with both state and district armed reserves like Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Kerala, Nagaland, Odisha, West Bengal etc.
Having a district armed reserve in a district gives the SP greater flexibility to deploy armed back-up without any hassle whereas the state armed police has a different command structure under a different leadership, this makes their deployment process slow and rigid. We recommend that each district should have a district armed reserve which would vary depending upon the requirement and size of a district, number could vary anywhere between 1 to 3 battalions. Currently most of the armed reserve police coys across India are understaffed, hence all the existing manpower should be amalgamated and roughly each battalion should then have 6 coy.
The proposed distribution of a battalion is as follows -
- 2 Armed Coys — armed with the new 7.62mm INSAS variant
- 2 Armed Coys — armed with 5.56mm INSAS rifles
- 1 Training Coy — for training and seminars
- 1 Security Coy — for security related work, armed with JVPC carbine
Taking the Delhi riots of 2020 as an example, savages and rioters ran amok on the streets of Delhi and it took 24 hours for the Delhi Police to take the situation under their control and establish law and order. This highlights the need of having district armed reserves and not just state armed police. Just to give the readers a brief background of Delhi’s security deployment, the civil police is backed by state armed police (Delhi Armed Police) battalions with an overall strength of 8,327. Delhi also hosts battalions of Central Armed Police Force (CAPFs) and other state reserve police forces like Rajasthan, Nagaland, Tripura etc for protection duties. Reason why it took the police 24 hours to respond is because most of the DAP personnel along with CAPF coys were deployed on the other side of the city for security duties for the scheduled visit of US President Donald Trump. Assessing the parameters we recommend 1 Armed Coy be deployed for every 3 police stations considering the total strength of DAP and number of police stations spread across Delhi (203). In parallel, more DAP battalions should be raised to lessen the burden of the existing DAP Coys. This would help police stations and Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCPs) who are equivalent to SPs, avail sufficient armed support to contain an isolated incident from snowballing into a bigger communal/ethnic riot.
POLICE SUPPORT ELEMENTS
There is also a problem, seldom discussed on forums but a pertinent one i.e. security duties and providing personal security to individuals occupying constitutional and judicial posts, private persons and other public representatives. The duty of providing security should be entrusted to a state level committee consisting of Director General of Police (DGP), Addtn DG (Special Branch/Intelligence). Names of individuals should be forwarded by the district intelligence branch on the basis of a security threat analysis which should be reviewed twice a year.
For providing security which can involve close protection and sentry duties, state police can raise specialised units which could be battalion strong. State government can hire ex-army soldiers and officers for the same, deploying former army personnel would lessen the burden on the district police which as it faces a manpower shortage.
Apart from security units, the states can raise their own industrial security wings called, some states like Kerala, Odisha, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand have already raised battalions, Uttar Pradesh is currently in process of raising such units. The state industrial security force (SISF) based on CISF can be used to provide security to private industrial complexes on a contract basis. The strength and number of battalions of SISF can depend upon the number of industrial complexes and other installations in the state.
Concluding, this article discussed the possible changes that can be brought in at various levels of a police district and changes that can be introduced in the police formations. In the upcoming articles we’ll talk about promotion policy, patrolling methods, police wireless department, reforms (above district level) and more…..Stay tuned.
(Original authors of this article are serving IPS officer who wish to remain unnamed and anonymous)
END OF PART 1
