Over 8,000 Delhi police posts lying vacant

New Delhi: With spurt in crime cases in the national capital, the city police department 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 84,685 police personnel, of which 8,091 positions are still vacant at present. “Except for South West district and West district, all the districts face the shortage of working police personnel,” it said.

The data stated incidents of murder, burglary and theft have been the highest in the Outer district since 2014. This is the district which the Praja pointed out as having the highest gap between the sanctioned and working police personnel, which stands at 18 per cent. High rank positions in Delhi police also have acute shortage, the data revealed, shortage of 58 per cent in the post of additional commissioners of police, 33 per cent shortage in additional deputy commissioners of police, 24 per cent shortage in post of assistant commissioners of police and 26 per cent in sub-inspector posts, as of March 2017. “Shortage of these posts directly affects the investigation and law and order of the city. The data is reflective of the understaffed police department. 10% gap in the sanctioned and working numbers of the police is severely affecting the quality of city policing. The personnel at the police sub-inspector level are short of 532 people from the previous year,” the data read.

Last year, the Delhi police had decided to promote 25,827 personnel, ranked between constables to assistant sub-inspectors. The move saw head constables being promoted to assistant sub-inspectors, thus qualifying them to handle cases as investigating officers.

Adding woes to the problem there has been a shortage of 26 per cent at the lower rank official (sub inspectors) whereas 10 percent shortage has been reported among police constables according to the data released.

Meanwhile, a report by the Delhi Minorities Commission (DMC) shows that the Delhi police employs less than four per cent of members from minority communities in its ranks.