Modern & tech-savvy cops: Government plans smart police station

NEW DELHI: A modern reception to receive visitors, gym for police personnel, lock-ups with CCTV cover and malkhana or records rooms with modern storage system and deep freezers for forensic samples.

This is home ministry’s conception of a smart police station, as per a draft prepared after Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitched for smart policing in December last year.

“Efforts have been made to make these police stations gender sensitive, modern, smart and techno-savvy,” says the 34-page concept paper prepared by the home ministry, which has come up with new standards for a modern police station.

The paper says that many police station buildings in India are not citizen-friendly and have far from optimum functional requirements.

“As police station buildings are public places, where people go for various reasons, expecting the police to help them, they find the police station buildings’ ambience wise pathetic, space wise inadequate and cleanliness wise extremely poor,” it says, stressing on the need to refurbish existing police stations and design new police stations in the specified way. “They (should) function as public places like a modern mini hospital (so) people feel at ease and comfortable in terms of space, cleanliness, functionality and privacy.”

The paper spells out species of smart police stations in four categories — in Tier 1 cities like Delhi, Tier 2 cities like Lucknow, semi-urban areas like Gurgaon and in rural areas. The main focus is on the ‘reception area’, which, it says, should have facilities for visitors to wait, toilets for visitors, issuance of visitor cards and directions to the visitors to meet the officers concerned.

“There should be enclosed waiting area near reception in each police station where the visitors may sit comfortably and wait,” the paper says. It also asks for workstations for officers of ranks of sub-inspectors, head constables and constables. “Providing a small working space for individual officials raises their self esteem and produces better results,” it says.

There should be a separate investigation room with workstations as per the paper, a malkhana with modern storage system as developed by CBI and NIA and deep freeze facilities so as to keep biological, viscera and DNA samples preserved at low temperatures.

The ministry has also asked for a briefing room with the facilities of TVs, digital maps, projections and video conferencing. “All the lockups should be monitored through CCTV cameras which should be operational 24X7 as is being done in police stations in some south Indian states,” the paper says.

Besides, the ministry has asked for a recreation room or gym in each police station for cops. “It is required for unwinding stress and boosting up health and morale,” the paper says.