Shortage of cops to deal with crisis

NEW DELHI: With the spurt in crime cases in the national capital, the city police is reeling under acute shortage of police staff to deal with the crisis. Acute shortage in the Delhi police force has affected policing in the national capital, said a data released by the Praja Foundation on Thursday.

It stated that there is a 10 per cent gap in the sanctioned and working numbers of police personnel. It also mentioned that such a gap has resulted in higher number of heinous crimes in districts.

The data said that Delhi has a sanctioned strength of 95,564 police personnel, of which 10,481 positions are still vacant at present. “All the districts of national capital face the shortage of working police personnel,” it said.

In 15 districts including the airport, 42,773 police personnel are sanctioned which is 17 percent short of the required staff.

The highest shortage of staff is in northeast district, which faces 25 percent staff crunch, followed by 24 percent in southwest district and same percent of shortage in east district while there have been considerable number of crimes in these districts.

Adding to the problem, there has been a shortage of 4195 people at the head constable rank and 4502 people at constable rank.