Think ‘national’ for modernising police forces, states told

For the primary time, the Union home ministry has requested state governments to attract up a “national theme” for modernisation of police forces because the Centre and states come collectively to debate states’ safety plans, use of drones, and communication and surveillance tools.

Five southern states – Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana and Kerala – are anticipated to satisfy dwelling ministry officers on March 21-22 to debate excessive visibility and deep affect initiatives that will ease the lives of residents, officers told ET. Subsequently, the ministry will maintain comparable conferences with different states.

In 2017, the union authorities permitted modernisation of police forces (MPF) initiative for three years from 2017-18 to 2019-20 with whole outlay of `25,061 crore, which included central finances outlay of `18,636.30 crore.

Last yr, no modernisation initiatives may very well be applied because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For 2021-22, the Union finances has allotted `668.50 crore for MPF, out of which the Centre has supplied `521.10 crore. The authorities additionally sought `305.39 crore from states for an annual motion plan .

“There shall be a national annual modernisation theme,” the house ministry stated in a communication despatched to states. “States shall ensure that they devote adequate resources in for attainment of the standards set for actualisation of the national theme of modernisation after identifying the gaps in modernisation vis-à-vis the standards. The Government of India will not permit expenditure under that component in the subsequent years as the national standards would have been met.”

ET has seen a duplicate of the letter.

MHA has categorised States into A and B. The first class consists of Northeastern states, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand the place the Centre will bear 90% of the MPF price with the state contributing the remainder 10%. Earlier, Jammu and Kashmir was a part of the ‘hill states’ class, however after the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, J&Okay has been bifurcated and made into two union territories (UTs).

The second class contains the remaining 18 states.The price of MPF in these states can be shared in a 60:40 Centre-state ratio.