Uttar Pradesh’s first woman commissioner Laxmi Singh took charge as Gautam Buddh Nagar’s new police chief on Wednesday at the Commissionerate Headquarters in Noida’s Sector 108.
As per an order dated November 28, the 2000-batch IPS officer has replaced previous chief Alok Singh, who has now taken up duties at Police HQ in Lucknow.
In her first interaction with the media, she spoke about what she expected to do and the challenges facing the Gautam Buddh Nagar police. She noted that safety and security for women would remain important and said that the perception of safety would also have to be maintained as a priority. Singh said, “If any small or big incident happened, and police cannot help after reaching out, then we are failing as a system.”
The Commissioner noted that another challenge for policing in Gautam Buddh Nagar was the fact that as a metropolitan centre, it has porous borders with Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, and said they would have to take forward the work that had already been done in the last three years in fighting organised crime. She also said the issue of appropriately manning police chowkis would be taken up, and areas where the 24-hour operation of the chowkis would be needed would also be examined, along with proper accommodation and back-end support for the police force.
Singh also said the issue of vehicles for police would also have to be taken up, especially in view of the requirement of highway patrols by the stations in rural parts of the district, noting that some vehicles were approaching the end of their service life. While the Gautam Buddh Nagar police has recently received some vehicles and others have been sanctioned, they have previously noted that worn-out vehicles which cannot reach high speeds have been a problem. She also said that control of cyber crime remained a priority, with a large number of cases that would need more trained personnel to tackle matters quickly.
In response to a query regarding an apparent rise in suicide cases in recent times, she noted that maintaining a helpline would be a priority for such cases to help people, noting that the previous two years had been difficult for people in all walks of life.
On the issue of the porous border, she noted that across the NCR, crime could be attributed to the ease of communication and crossing the border, and that police would have to rethink the hours and strategies of policing arterial roads.