3 Cops to protect each VIP, one for 761 Citizens

Bureau of Police Research and Development

New Delhi: There’s a shortfall of five lakh cops against sanctioned vacancies in India. But that doesn't stop massive deployment for VIP security – to the tune of almost three cops per VIP. 

That, in turn, leaves hardly any police personnel available to safeguard lesser mortals – one cop for every 761 common men and women, to be precise. Data collected by the Union home ministry’s Bureau of Police Research and Development shows that 25 states and UTs deployed 50,059 police personnel to protect 16,788 VIPs – including ministers, MPs, MLAs, bureaucrats and judges – in the year 2010. Interestingly, this exceeded the number officially sanctioned for VIP security by 21,761.The data, released by Union home minister P Chidambaram on Friday, also shows that Punjab – which has 11,000 police posts vacant – had topped the list with 5,410 cops protecting VIPs. Delhi, with 1,186 vacancies, has 5,100 cops protecting VIPs, while Andhra Pradesh, with a massive shortfall of 40,596 personnel, still manages to assign 3,958 cops to guard VIPs. The situation was even worse in 2009, with 47,355 police personnel being deployed to protect 17,451 VIPs across the country. States and UTs had sanctioned 23,637 personnel for VIP security during the year, but the actual number ended up being double that figure. Besides a central list of VIPs having over 300-odd protectees, each state and UT has its own list, taking the numbers into thousands. Though the Union home ministry has, over the past three years, pruned the central list of VIP protectees by constantly reviewing the ‘real’ threat perception, states do not seem to be responding accordingly. Bihar, which has the worst police-population ration (total police personnel per lakh of population) also has the maximum 3,030 VIPs being given protection in the state followed by 1,685 in Punjab and 1,640 in West Bengal. The BPR&D report highlighted that the manpower for protected persons' protection duty was drawn from available resources generally without corresponding increase in sanctioned strength for the purpose.