Be friendly with People ; Bihar DGP

PATNA: Bihar's new police chief believes in decentralisation of works. "For, there's a need to ease pressure the state police headquarters is burdened with," DGP Shiv Chandra Jha, who assumed office recently, told TOI. In an interview, Jha said matters like grant of leave to district SPs will no longer be handled by the state police HQ. Orders are being circulated empowering range DIGs to sanction or reject leave applications of SPs. "The DIGs or, say, IGs are the best persons to assess the gravity of the situation in the field and take a call on allowing or rejecting leave applications of SPs," he said. He said the idea is to free the state police HQ of petty matters so that it could devote its time and energy on more important issues like implementation of welfare schemes for policemen. The DGP said police stations across the state have been directed to be friendly while dealing with people. Further, weekly meetings, on the pattern of Central police organisations, would now become a part of the police HQ functioning. While such a meeting on Friday would be addressed by the DGP and attended by ADG and IG-rank officers, another meeting on Monday would be presided over by ADG (HQ) D N Gautam and attended by IGs posted in the HQ. "The purpose of these meetings is to monitor the progress of assigned task, assess the ground reality and keep a tab on officers so that work could be carried out expeditiously," Jha said. The DGP said promotion of constables to the rank of ASI and so on have been taken up after a long gap. Besides, the matter related to compensation money under the Security Related Expenditures, which had been pending since long, has been resolved. The police HQ can now spend a sum of up to Rs two crore for paying compensation to the kin of the policemen who die in encounters with extremists.