Northeast Police: Imperfectly Perfect

With rising security issues from within and outside the borders, there have been demands for police reforms to meet the security challenges. But the governments’ spending on police remains about 3 per vehicles and under-utilisation of funds earmarked for modernisation of infrastructure. The United Nations recommended standard 222 police per lakh persons. But in India, the actual strength is just 137 police per lakh persons. Till January 2016, there were 24 per cent vacancies in the state forces amounting to about 5.5 lakh vacancies. On the other hand, the central forces had 7 per cent vacancies.

State Expenditure in Police Forces

The Northeast region is one of the conflict-ridden regions in the country with problems of home grown insurgency, border disputes and high crime rates under Indian Penal Code (IPC). Yet, it remains one of the most neglected regions due to discriminatory allocation of funds, underutilisation in some states and lack of political will for reforms. Therefore, it is important to analyse the crime records of the region and urge for police reforms in utmost urgency.

The state-wise expenditure in police forces needs a closer look. According to previous year’s PRS India report, Manipur spends the highest in the region at 8.7 per cent followed by Nagaland at 7.2 per cent, Tripura at 4.9 per cent, Mizoram and Sikkim at 4.8 per cent and Meghalaya at 4.2 per cent. Though Assam has most numbers of criminal cases, the expenditure is just 2.8 per cent. Manipur, in spite of spending large amount, have failed to reduce the incidents of crimes. On the other hand, Assam government has shown less interest to increase expenditure. Some states are over funded with no positive results while some states remain under funded.

There are two states-Meghalaya and Sikkim where there have been substantive reduction in the state expenditures in police forces from 201415 to 2015-16. In Meghalaya, the expenditure in 2015-16 saw a reduction of around Rs 135 crores from 2014-15. Similarly, Sikkim also experienced a marginal reduction in the state expenditure from Rs 314 crores in 2014-15 to Rs 278 crores in 2015-16.