Gill finds huge hole in police net

Contrast this with 20,000 police personnel and 7 battalions of Central forces in Chhattisgarh pitted against 5,000 Maoists cadres amply supported by thousands of accomplices in social as well as political sectors. Of the 20,000 police personnel (actually 16,000), almost half (8,000) are deployed in Naxal-affected districts.

In a meeting today, Chief Minister Raman Singh took up the matter of vacant posts with the home department higher-ups. Gill did not attend as it was a departmental review meeting.

‘‘It’s a very serious issue that there are so many vacancies… Efforts would be made to fill up the posts at the earliest. The CM has asked the Home Department to initiate measures in this regard,’’ Chhattisgarh Home Minister Ramvichar Netam told The Indian Express after the meeting.

He, however, refused to divulge details of the anti-Naxal strategy in the wake of the recent killings of 15 Salva Judum members. The state government has been backing the anti-Naxal movement of the Salva Judum. ‘‘It’s a sensitive issue and we are doing everything we can. All I can say is that we expect more support from the Centre in terms of security infrastructure,’’ Netam said.

But officials in the police headquarters here said the promise of ‘‘filling up vacancies at the earliest’’ had been made umpteen times. ‘‘The police headquarters had made several proposals to the government to fill up the posts. What is puzzling is that the finance department had also cleared the recruitments,’’ a senior police official said.

It may be recalled that Gill, at a recent meeting with the Union Home Secretary, had made a strong case for more security forces in Chhattisgarh.

‘‘Whenever we demand more forces from the Centre, it points to the vacancies in the state police,’’ a Home Department official said. That is why Gill, say police officials here, cannot expect relief from the Centre. ‘‘It’s purely a state-created problem. These vacancies are a cumulative effect of the wrong policies of the erstwhile Jogi government when the state came into being. For three years after the state’s formation, there was virtually no police recruitment. The last two years have seen a fairly high percentage of recruitment but the backlog persists,’’ said a senior police official.

In the last two years, the Raman Singh government has recruited around 4,500 constables but it has not been able to clear the vacancy backlog.