Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, March 20
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday announced a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country, to further strengthen the state’s law-enforcement apparatus, with dedicated District Technical Units, along with District Narcotic Units, Social Media Units, Forensic Units and Anti-Sabotage Checking Teams, in all the districts.
Announcing the move, aimed at further strengthening the state’s law-enforcement machinery to address the new challenges of policing and investigation, the Chief Minister said that after stabilising the law and order situation over the past four years, his government was now focusing on augmenting law enforcement further, with more touch points to tackle the new-age crimes, like Digital/Cyber Crimes, and enhancing the safety and security of women and other vulnerable sections of society.
Apart from 3,100 domain experts to combat specialised crimes, 10,000 police officials would be recruited, of which 33 per cent would be women, at the level of SIs and constables, to expand the ground force and ensure more effective policing, said the Chief Minister.
With the changing nature of crime necessitating support and interventions by domain experts for the effective prevention/detection of crime, Punjab Police would soon recruit around 3,100 specialist police officers and domain experts in the fields of law, forensics, digital forensics, information technology, data mining, cyber security, intelligence analysis, human resource management and development and road safety planning and engineering, said Amarinder, who holds the Home portfolio.
The pioneering initiative, designed to transform the police force, would make Punjab the first state in the country to induct domain experts, said the Chief Minister, as the state government geared up to scale the police department to the next level, after successfully implementing a slew of drastic measures, in line with the government’s promise to ensure rule of law and maintain law and order in the state, and secure the well-being and safety of the common man.
Giving details of the initiatives, DGP Dinkar Gupta said the domain experts would include around 600 law graduates, 450 crime scene investigators, about 1,350 IT experts with specialist qualifications and experience in law, commerce, forensics, digital forensics, data mining and data analysis for deployment as cyber detectives, financial detectives, homicide detectives, sexual assault and rape detectives. The Punjab government will also recruit around 460 qualified and trained counsellors, clinical psychologists and community and victim support officers for deployment at the family counselling centres and women help desks in all districts of the state.
To further augment women power in the police department, 3,400 new women police officials will be recruited as part of the drive to enrol 10,000 more police officials in Punjab Police, mostly in the rank of sub-inspector and constables. This translates into 33 per cent women of the total recruitment, in line with the state government’s commitment to provide equal opportunity to women to compete with men for various positions in Punjab Police, said Gupta. Out of the total recruitment of women, about 300 women will be recruited as sub-inspectors and more than 3,100 would be inducted as constables in Punjab Police.
The DGP said that once these specialised police officers got recruited and joined the police department in the second or third quarter of 2021, each of the 382 police stations in the state would have a dedicated police station law officer and a community and victim support officer. Similarly, 170 major police stations of Punjab, including border police stations, will have dedicated forensic officers, crime data analysts. In addition, cyber crime detectives will be placed in each of the 100 sub-divisions in the state.
