Sensitive areas in city to get CCTVs

Better training, higher security and community policing will be some of the police reforms introduced this year

Sensitive areas in city to get CCTVs

Better training, higher security and community policing will be some of the police reforms introduced this year

The buck may stop with them as far as law and order is concerned, but the communication gap between the police and the common man cannot be denied. That's set to change in 2011 though, with the introduction of community police.

Speaking to SUNDAY MiD DAY from Delhi, Union Home Secretary Gopal Krishna Pillai confirmed the move and said that emphasis will be given to basic police reforms this year and a major effort in this direction will be to develop community policing.

Apart from the police force seeing lot of modernisation in the New Year, efforts will also be taken to ensure that police recruitment is done on the basis of merit and transparency. Efforts are also on to ensure that major cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad get a special security cover, as organised in New Delhi during the Common Wealth Games (CWG). Close-circuit television cameras (CCTVs) will be put up at all sensitive entry and exit points for law and order monitoring. This will not only be to control traffic at main streets and junctions. Centralised control rooms will also be set up for tackling emergency situations from one roof.

During the CWG, Delhi police had installed over 2,000 CCTVs that helped them keep a watchful eye on the happenings in the city. The CCTVs sent live images to a state-of-the-art police control room that was set up at the police headquarters.

To add to this, over 1 lakh houses for policemen will be constructed in the country with public private partnership, and adequate facilities will be provided to upgrade their training facilities.

More emphasis will also be given on intelligence gathering. To upgrade intelligence gathering techniques, three new high-end training centres will come up at Thiruvananthapuram, Jodhpur and Delhi. The centre has already sanctioned a sum for constructing these centres, which will also boost intelligence gathering mechanisms to keep a tab on situations prevailing in the North East.

Pillai admitted to SMD that Naxalism is the nation's biggest internal security threat. However, he clarified that "Naxalism is more of a governance than policing problem. The Central planning commission is working closely to find means and measures to tackle Naxalism," he said.

On terrorism and sleeper active cells in the country, Pillai said, "In the past year, acting on specific intelligence inputs, we have managed to detect 20 sleeper cells, who were supporting different terror outfits."

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