Agra, Ghaziabad, Prayagraj to have police commissionerates
The number of districts with police commissionerates in Uttar Pradesh will go up to seven
LUCKNOW: The state cabinet on Friday approved the implementation of police commissionerates in three more cities, namely Agra, Ghaziabad and Prayagraj, after witnessing improved police working in Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi and Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida) where the system was introduced earlier.
With this, the number of districts with police commissionerates will go up to seven in Uttar Pradesh.
Briefing the media, energy and urban development minister AK Sharma said the police commissionerate system will be implemented in the entire Agra, Ghaziabad and Prayagraj districts. He said the proposal was approved at the cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Yogi Adityanath. The entire areas of these districts will be declared as metropolitian areas after which the system will be introduced, he added.
He said the police commissionerate system was for districts having a population of 10 lakh (1 million) or more. These three districts meet the criterion.
Agra has a population of over 44.18 lakh (4.4 million), Ghaziabad 46.61 lakh (4.6 million) and Prayagraj 59.54 lakh (5.9 million) as per the 2011 Census.
He said the state government was committed to improved policing in these districts as Agra is important from the tourism, industrial and law and order point of view. Ghaziabad has many industries. Prayagraj is significant from the cultural and religious perspective. The Mahakumbh-2025 will be organised in Prayagraj.
The police commissionerate system was introduced in Lucknow and Gautam Buddhnagar in the first phase on January 13, 2020. The same system was replicated in Varanasi and Kanpur on March 25, 2021 in the second phase. Sharma said the police commissioner system was effective in crime control and handling new generation crimes like cyber crimes, fake call centres, drug menace and other online crimes.
He said this system had also been effective in crowd control, curbing incidents of damage to public property as well as improving the traffic system.
Sharma said the officers of the inspector general (IG) of police rank and above will be posted as police commissioners in these three cities. The police commissionerates in Lucknow, Gautam Buddhnagar, Varanasi and Kanpur have additional director general (ADG) rank officers as police commissioners.
The minister clarified that the entire districts, including police stations of rural areas will also be included in the police commissionerate.
He said the police stations of rural areas were kept out of the purview of police commissioners in Lucknow, Varanasi and Kanpur initially and were treated as separate police districts supervised by an officer of the superintendent of police (SP) rank.
The rural police stations in Lucknow, Varanasi and Kanpur were brought under the purview of the police commissionerate recently on November 3 to maintain uniformity in police working across the district and in view of practical problems, the minister said.
Uttar Pradesh director general of police (DGP) DS Chauhan welcomed the state cabinet’s decision to introduce police commissionerate system in three more cities. He said the cities have been selected very sensibly as Agra has international importance, Ghaziabad has industrial significance, besides being the gateway of U.P, while Prayagraj is important as the world’s largest human gathering in the form of the Mahakumbh takes place there.