Punjab to list 1,404 unmapped villages online
LUDHIANA: A total of 1,404 villages of 19 districts of Punjab are to be listed online with police stations concerned. The SHOs have been asked to list the villages immediately and report to the office of commissioner of police and senior superintendents of police. The information will be used in the police database.
Name of the district, sub-division and police stations concerned will be reflected along with the name of the village. The data will be used in changing the jurisdiction of police stations in rural areas.
Punjab Police are developing a mobile application using the information.
Ludhiana district has the highest number of unmapped villages. The government will generate unique code for each local government body after the exercise.
Ludhiana commissioner of police Rakesh Agrawal said that according to the list, 347 villages fall under jurisdiction of Police commissionerate, Ludhiana, and Ludhiana rural police. The SHOs have been asked to list the villages that fall under their jurisdiction.
Agrawal said that the data will be sent to the police headquarters in Chandigarh. He added that the data will be used in developing mobile applications and for other government purposes too. The villages which are not listed online have been kept under unmapped villages’ category
“It will be beneficial for the villagers. They would type the name of the village in the application and it would give information about the police station concerned, tehsil and district. The information will reflect on Google search also,” said the commissioner of police.
A police official said the department had reshuffled jurisdiction of the police stations two years ago, which caused inconvenience to residents of some of the villages and police stations concerned also.
After Ludhiana, Sangrur has the highest (206) unmapped villages. Bathinda and Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar have two unmapped villages each. In the next phase the police will add more villages in the list.
Confusion of jurisdiction
Confusion of jurisdiction of police stations of two districts, including Ludhiana and Jalandhar, has helped the accused involved in illegal mining of sand from Sutlej.
From 2018, the Ludhiana police used to deter excavating sand on a government land near the Sutlej banks in Meharban. As there is utter confusion on jurisdiction the police are unable to lodge an FIR.
In October 2018, the local police raised the issue before revenue officers and asked them for demarcation of the land, but to no avail.