Some observers are strong in their views that the time has arrived for the state to do away with the revenue police system continuing in the hills of what is presently known as Uttarakhand since 1861. Though it would be painful for the state to rupture the long-continuing tradition it is an imperative in view of accidents and crimes happening in the revenue areas thick and fast with the revenue police proving inadequate to take on them, they opine.
Things are indeed proving difficult for the revenue police, crippled as it is with staff crunch and fund crunch and dearth of the wherewithal to deal with the fast- changing patterns of the crimes in the cyber era.
What is happening is that they are ill-equipped to deal with the aftermath of the accidents as they lack the equipments to conduct rescue and relief operations in case of a major accident. State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and regular police are being per force deployed for such works in the revenue areas. Besides, the purported Maoists have been conducting postering and graffiti campaign in the revenue areas in Almora, Bageshwar and Nainital districts, throwing a dare to the administration. Those involved in the campaign remain unidentified. The district administration is solely dependent on the revenue police which is proving inadequate to the task.
“There was a time when very few crimes were reported from the mountainous districts of the state. Now the situation has changed. like what is happening in the plain districts, theft, crime against women and the like are on the rise in the mountainous parts of the state too. Things need a drastic solution,” an observer said.
A senior police officer said that some revenue areas like Tyuni of Chakrata have been replaced with regular police by setting police station there. The proposals sent by the police to the administration, asking for replacing revenue police with regular police in the sensitive areas of the districts, have been gathering dust in the state administrative headquarters, he rued.
Another observer said that the role of the revenue police since the time it came up in 1861 at the behest of the British Indian administration was glorious. “We heard instances of revenue police officer apprehending criminals while being armed with nothing better than bamboo sticks. But now the pattern of crime has changed. Revenue police is failing to rise to the occasion. They are, however, not to blame for that. They are not meant to take on the modern era crimes,” he said.
Uttarakhand Pravati Patwari/Revenue Police Employee Federation member Shankar Dutt Kapri said, “More than half of the posts in revenue police are vacant. We are facing manpower crunch. We are ill- equipped to crack cyber crimes and conduct rescue and relief operations in case of road accidents now being reported nearly daily. When road accidents, landslides and other natural disasters happen we are left with no other option but to inform the regular police or the administration. Things are pretty frustrating for us,” he said, adding that either the state government must re-jig revenue police in the appropriate way or it should hand over the areas under revenue police to regular police.