LUCKNOW: In a departure from the usual perception about policing in Uttar Pradesh, one of the police stations of state capital Lucknow – Gudamba-- has been adjudged as one of the best three police stations in the country on index of performance.
In fact, the exercise was conducted by intelligence bureau under the supervision of Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) at the instance of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh who, last year at DGs meet, had suggested that an activity to identify country’s top 10 police stations should be conducted.
Subsequently, the responsibility was entrusted to IB which constituted a committee to come up with parameters for evaluation of the performance of over 15000 police stations across the country.
Total 80 heads were decided according to which police stations’ performance had to be evaluated. These parameters included, citizen and police interface, condition of police station, rate of conviction, use of technology in crime prevention and detection, redressal of public grievance, feedback of local residents.
Moreover, DGPs were asked to send names of top performing police stations of their respective states. Even IB hired an autonomous body Quality Council of India to carry out the exercise.
“Our Gudamba police station has been selected as one of the best three police stations in the country as per a survey conducted by IB,” said Additional Director General (Law & order) Anand Kumar.
He added that the final ranking would be known on January 6. “Hopefully, Gudamba tops the tally,” he maintained.
Two police stations—Gudamba in Lucknow and Ghiror in Mainpuri—qualified to be evaluated on the set parameters for honour.
In November, an eight-member expert team visited Lucknow and Mainpuri to scrutinize the working of the two police stations. ADG (L&O) was conveyed the result on January 1. IB joint director urged ADG Anand Kumar to ensure presence of station house officer of Gudamba police station (inspector Ram Surat Sonkar) at Tekanpur BSF academy in Madhya Pradesh for receiving the award on January 6. In all probability, Union Home Minister will hand over the shield of performance to SHOs of the top-3 police stations on January 6.
However, the names of two other police stations were not know to UP police officials at present.
Hailing the result, SSP Lucknow, Deepak Kumar said he would also honour SHO Gudamba police station, Ram Surat Sonkar and the entire team which worked hard through the year. Meanwhile, Sonkar, upbeat over the development, felt that onus of raising the bar further was on him now.