New Delhi: According to a report, one in every three police stations in the country does not have even a single camera. This, despite the Supreme Court ruling, which mandated CCTV cameras in all police stations.
The report, which also analyses the police workforce in the country, claimed while the force has grown by 32 per cent between 2010 and 2020, the share of women is only a “meagre 10.5 per cent” and 41 per cent of police stations across India do not have women help desks.
The India Justice Report, ‘Police: Improvements, Shortfalls and National Trends- An analysis of Data on Police Organisation 2021’, said 5,396 of the total 17,233 police stations in the country do not have a single CCTV camera, and only Odisha, Telangana and Puducherry have all their police stations equipped with at least one camera, news agency PTI reported.
According to the report, only one of the 894 police stations in Rajasthan – the seventh-largest state by population – has CCTV cameras installed on its premises, while Manipur, Ladakh and Lakshadweep have none, the report said.
“In its 2021 report, the Data on Police Organisation shows that one in three of the 17,233 police stations do not have a single CCTV camera. Only three states/UTs (Odisha, Telangana and Puducherry) have at least one CCTV in all police stations. Four states/UTs (Rajasthan, Manipur, Ladakh, Lakshadweep) have reported less than 1% police stations with CCTV cameras,” it stated.
On women in the police force, it said, “The share is 10.5 per cent. The aspiration is to take it to 33 per cent. Nationally, it has taken 15 years from 2006 to 2020 for the nation to increase the share of women personnel in police from 3.3% to 10.5%. As of 2020, no state or union territory has reached the target they have set for themselves,” the report said.
However, going by the current rate of increase of women’s induction into the force, the report said it will take 33 years to reach 33 per cent of women nationally.
Among large and mid-sized states, Odisha will take 428 years to reach 33 per cent, while Bihar will take only eight years.
The Delhi Police, under the Ministry of Home Affairs with 12.4% of women, will take 31 years, it said.
While Gujarat and Bihar will take only seven and eight years, respectively, to reach the target, Mizoram may take 585 years, the report noted.
“Assuming that the rates of recruitment of women and men in police stay the same, it would take Madhya Pradesh 78 and Uttar Pradesh 21 years,” it claimed.
