Reacting sharply to the State Government’s recent decision on the formation of six new police stations in revenue areas, Uttarakhand Pravati Patwari/Revenue Police Class Employee Federation’s general secretary Shankar Dutt Kapri asked the State Government either to redress revenue police’s long-unaddressed concerns or wind it up altogether by handing over the policing charge of all the areas presently under revenue police to regular police.
“Revenue police have been facing acute crunch of staff and resources for years. Current situation is such that a single revenue police officer is perforce looking after two to three revenue areas. We have been demanding a revamp of the force but the State Government has decided to cripple us further by handing over policing to regular police instead of restructuring the traditional force of the State,” he added.
“Does the State Government know that the people living in revenue areas do not want to have regular police stations coming up in their areasIJ This is because they are happy with revenue police’s functioning. Our success rate is around 90 per cent as regards crime cases happening in revenue areas-something that is far better than that of regular police,” he claimed.
He further said revenue police, existing only in Uttarakhand, marks an age-old tradition bequeathed by the colonial regime. “Rupturing the long-continuing tradition would not go down well with the people. The Government would face the heat of things soon,” Kapri warned.
Continuing with his charges against the State Government, he said that around 50 per cent posts of revenue police and 70 per cent posts of peons have been lying vacant in the revenue police area for a long time. “With the increase of cyber cases in the revenue areas, the revenue police need to be equipped with advanced technology. This aside, the personnel should be adequately trained to handle such cases effectively. As of now, they rely on regular police to collect the location of the cyber case accused. Our demands include advanced equipment to be provided to revenue police, increasing the number of such outposts and allocating adequate budgets among others,” he said.
He further said that apart from constructing buildings to house revenue police offices, the Government should provide them with lockers, hand-cuffs, computers and other equipment to deal with the crime cases being reported now-a- days. Notably, the British Government had introduced revenue police in 1861 with the creation of three posts - revenue inspector, revenue sub-inspector and a fourth class employee- to collect revenue from the residents as well as to check crimes while maintaining law and order in the mountainous parts.
It should be mentioned here that state government has given a severe blow to revenue police by deciding to set up six regular police stations in the areas where policing remains entrusted to the revenue police. This is being deemed as a retaliatory step against the recalcitrant revenue police officers and employees who kept on boycotting policing works for the past few years in support of their demands. Notably, the institution being started by the erstwhile British regime way back in 1861 to collect taxes and curb crimes in the mountainous areas of what is present-day Uttarakhand, the areas under the jurisdictional purview of revenue police are still large, comprising around 60 percent of the state’s territory.