Finding the existing vacancy of sanctioned police posts in the country to be close to 4.73 lakh, the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed State Home Secretaries to indicate the vacancy position among police force in their respective States within three weeks.
The Bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar asked the States to treat the issue seriously since most of the States were not represented when the Court dealt with the issue in a PIl filed by an advocate Manish Kumar. The Bench, also comprising Justices NV Ramana and DY Chandrachud, also stated in its order that Home Secretaries of those States which fail to file affidavits will remain personally present in Court on the next date.
Kumar argued that a direct link exists between the vacancy position among police and the deteriorating law and order situation. He submitted that out of the total sanctioned posts for police in the country, almost 22 per cent remain vacant. He supported this fact with a recent statistics showing 4.73 lakh vacancies across all police ranks in the country as on January 1, 2015. Taking this figure as the basis, the bench called out the names of several states but no lawyer turned up to argue.
Some States such as Chhattisgarh filed an affidavit indicating the vacancy position of 3,362 posts as in the year 2014. Under the latest statistics available with the petitioner, the vacancy position among police in Chhattisgarh rose to over 10,000.
The bench said, “In view of the importance of the issue, we require Home Secretaries of all the State Governments to file affidavits in this court depicting the vacancy position…In order to ensure compliance of the order, we direct Centre to communicate the instant order to all the Home Secretaries of State Governments within one week.”
The Court was of the view that once the vacancy position is settled, the police force will not work under pressure. Kumar sought a slew of directions in his PIl aimed at making the police force functional and responsive.