Allot one-third of vacant posts in police to women: Maneka Gandhi to Rajnath Singh

In her letter, Maneka has said 33 per cent reservation for women in the police force is required so as to improve the “overall sensitivity of police towards crimes against women”.

She added that despite the Centre mandating such a reservation in all Union Territories and seven states also agreeing in principle to follow suit, the recruitment is yet to “pick up”.

According to data from the Bureau of Police Research and Development, the strength of policewomen across all states is 1.2 lakh, which is 7.10 per cent of the total police force as on January 2017. It is marginally up from 6.11 per cent in January 2014.

“With the Supreme Court pushing for filling the vacant posts in the police force, I see an opportunity where we can make this happen… At this stage, if we can direct that at least 1/3rd of these vacancies should be filled up with women, we can greatly enhance the percentage of women in the force,” the letter states, while requesting that Singh personally intervene in the matter.

Incidentally, 1.81 lakh — more than a third of the 5 lakh vacancies — are in UP, from where both Maneka and Singh have been elected as MPs. Maneka had written to all chief ministers in August 2014 and six months later to Singh, asking for implementation of the reservation policy in the police force.

In January 2015, the Home Ministry made it mandatory for all UTs and subsequently directed state governments to create additional posts of women constables/sub inspectors by converting the vacant posts of male constables. These, in addition to an April 2013 Home Ministry advisory, resulted in Bihar, Sikkim, Gujarat, MP, Jharkhand, Tripura and Telangana introducing a reservation policy of over 30 per cent for women in the police force.

“The states have agreed to start recruiting women,” said a ministry official, adding that the only way to make the force gender-sensitive is to recruit more women.