Policemen battling day and night to protect others are themselves vulnerable. There is a roof over the head, but not safe. The incident of the collapse of the barrack wall in the Kanpur police line is its latest example. Many police lines and police buildings built in the British era in Uttar Pradesh are now shabby. Even after this, the policemen and their families are forced to live in them.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath felt this agony of policemen during his visit to the Lucknow Police Line nearly three years ago. After this, along with police modernization, he also opened the mouth of the government treasury for the construction of residential and non-residential buildings of police. At present construction work of about Rs 2745 crore is proposed in the Police Department. Many of these works are in progress.
Sensing the dilapidated condition of the police buildings, ADG Law and Order Prashant Kumar had written a letter to the SSP and SP of all the districts on July 6 and warned them to inspect and repair the dilapidated buildings as soon as the rainy season starts. The ADG had also spoken of shifting policemen living and working in dilapidated buildings to other places.
Now the incident in Kanpur has opened up the gaps in the districts and forced the policemen to stay in unsafe buildings even after instructions from senior officials. Police lines in Lucknow were established in the year 1942. Similarly, the police lines of Kanpur, Agra, Varanasi, Meerut and other big cities also came into existence during the British era. Many of these buildings are no longer liveable.
The ADG said that at present the approval of construction of 582 buildings of residential and non-residential buildings of about 2745.44 crore in the police department has been received by the government. An amount of over Rs 1069 crore has also been released for construction works. Apart from this, about 100 construction works are proposed. New transit hostels are also to be built in the police line of 44 districts. Apart from this, the construction of barracks and hostels for male and female constables is targeted to be completed soon.
