By Mouli Mareedu
Copyright deccanchronicle
Hyderabad: The Indian Police Foundation (IPF), in partnership with the Telangana police, will study the functioning of police personnel in the state and recommend reforms to improve the quality of service in the police stations.As part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Police Foundation (IPF), Director General of Police (DGP) Jitender said a team of officials would visit several police stations located across the state, including tricommissionates of Hyderabad, and interact with citizens and police personnel to understand issues being faced by them. “The teams will interact with citizens visiting police stations and police personnel at the police stations. They will collect data from the police stations on recent visitors, complaints lodged and their status. After an in-depth study, they will prepare a report and recommend reforms for providing quality service to the people,” the DGP explained. The focus will be on improving grievance redressal, ensuring more responsive policing, enhancing women’s safety, and creating a supportive work environment for police personnel in police stations. The project was approved by the Telangana government as a pilot project. Welcoming the initiative of the Telangana police, the Forum for Good Governance president M. Padmanabha Reddy said that the police officials also must implement the Supreme Court’s recommendations to prevent political interference in policing. “The police must avoid the involvement of political leaders in regular policing. Earlier, the governments formed several committees to study the policing system and made recommendations, but the state governments failed to comply with such recommendations. Ever since the formation of Telangana, the influence of political leaders on police has gone up. We welcome the Telangana police’s initiative to improve the quality of service. There is a need to bring about changes at the ground level in all police stations in terms of improving the redressal system,” Padmanabha Reddy felt. Advocate G Ramana Murthy said the government must consider allotting an Investigation Officer (IO) to limited cases and confine them only for investigation purposes. Sub-inspectors, and circle inspectors, who are investigating officers of several cases, face an immense workload and political pressure, apart from additional duties, making them perform in a suboptimal manner.
