BHUBANESWAR : Over 20,000 missing persons cases have been registered in the state in the last nine months of which, 7,048 have been traced, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi informed the Assembly on Monday.
While responding to a query from Congress MLA Sofia Firdous, Majhi said 20,060 missing persons cases had been registered between June 1, 2024 and February 28, 2025. Of these, 7,048 people have been traced while 13,012 are still in the missing list.
“The reasons for the delay in resolving pending cases and challenges faced in tracing persons are late reporting of missing persons by the relatives especially due to social stigma, ignorance and other reasons,” the CM explained.
He said some persons go outside the state for work without informing the family members as a result of which the latter report them as missing. There are also cases of elopement where the girls and women evade notice due to fear of criminal prosecution against the persons with whom they are living. In many cases, the families or the relatives of the missing persons also hesitate to disclose the actual facts before police, he said.
The CM also admitted a lack of coordination between police and other agencies that has hindered detection of missing persons and resolving the cases. The information on detection of missing children in other districts or states are not shared with the police station the kids belong to despite the latter revealing their identity or their parents’ or village names.
Details regarding children housed in child care institutions (CCIs) are not being uploaded in the Mission Vatsalya portal by child welfare committees for which it is difficult to link them to the missing cases in different police stations in Odisha. “Integration of facial recognition software into Mission Vatsalya portal will go a long way in establishing the identity of such children and reintegrating them with their parents,” Majhi said.
He said steps are being taken to fill up vacancies in integrated anti-human trafficking unit (IAHTU), special juvenile police unit (SJPU) and police stations to improve the staff position for better response in cases of missing reports.
67 IAS, 69 IPS posts lying vacant in state
Bhubaneswar: Even as the state government has planned to fill up 65,000 vacant posts in two years, the situation is quite alarming in the bureaucratic-level. Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi on Monday informed the Assembly that 67 posts in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and 69 posts each in the Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Service (IFS) are lying vacant in the state.
Responding to a query from BJP MLA Tankadhar Tripathy, the chief minister said the number of vacancies in Odisha Administrative Service (OAS) and Odisha Police Service (OPS) were 253 each while the vacancy position in Odisha Finance Service (OFS) was 274, 611 in Odisha Forest Service (OFS) and 263 in Odisha Revenue Service (ORS).