The State Government has decided to introduce community policing on a pilot basis in some urban areas from April 1 and reorganise the police stations for better coordination.
Announcing this during his reply to the discussions on the demand for grants relating to the Home and General Administration Departments for the year 2013-14, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik informed the Assembly on Friday that under the community policing scheme the police stations would be divided into contiguous beats with and a personnel in the rank of ASI, Havildar or Constable as the beat police officer.
The beat police officer, he said, would make efforts to contact eachand every family of the beat area and would be accessible to everyonefor redressal of their problems. In a bid to make various administrative units co-terminus for bettercoordination at the field level, all the police stations would bemade co-terminus with the blocks, he said.
He said a block may have one or two police stations depending on itsarea and population, but no police station would be divided into morethan one block. Each gram panchayat as a whole would be part of one police station only. The reorganisation of police stations would be completed soon, the Chief Minister said.