New Delhi: India’s first assembly election with no Covid-19 protocols in force will be held in Himachal Pradesh on November 12 and the Himachal Pradesh Police is all geared up to ensure that the election is held in a peaceful manner, for which the state police has already begun the preparations.

“We are proceeding to conduct the first Covid-free election in Himachal Pradesh on November 12. Given the geography and climate situation of the region, it is a Herculean task but we are all prepared to ensure the poll takes place in a peaceful manner,” said Sanjay Kundu, Director General of Police (DGP), HP, in an exclusive interview with Bureaucrats India Editor-In-Chief Navneet Anand and Rajeev R.

He said: “We have a challenge of dealing with very long borders with other states - 216 km borders with Jammu & Kashmir, about 350 km with Punjab, 50 km of border with Haryana, 180 km with Uttarakhand and a small border with Uttar Pradesh and Ladakh.”

“Keeping in view the sensitivity of the borders, we are already keeping a check on cross-border liquor, drugs, arms and narcotics smuggling. We have ensured that all arrangements are in place to conduct a free and fair assembly election in Himachal Pradesh,” said Kundu.

Replying to a question, DGP Kundu said that there has been a great transformation in policing in the last 30 years. “The first thing to notice is the induction quality. Right from the Constable level to the IPS level, we have come a long way,” he said.

“Technology has also changed tremendously. We cannot compare with the rest of the world but certainly today our technology is of very high level. The other thing which has got transformed over the years is gender parity. Today the police force has become more gender sensitive and we are seeing a number of women in key roles,” commented Kundu.

Talking about cyber crime, he said that the profile of crime has also changed. “Today’s biggest threat is cyber crime as it is borderless and boundary-less and affects everyone. We need to tweak our laws to make it align with the reality of today’s crime. We need to do perspective planning so that we are ahead of the crime. To address these crimes every district of the country needs to have one cyber crime police station with a laboratory to do real time investigation,” he said.

Reflecting further, he said that demographic, social and technological changes are forming new forms of crime but we are well geared up to deal with this as we have got very good minds in all levels of personnel. There have been problems of terrorism and Naxalism in Punjab and North East in the past but the country applied its mind and resources and addressed it.

Talking about the ‘Broken Window’ model of policing, Kundu said: “When I took over as Himachal Pradesh DGP, I had three major issues to handle - crime against women and children, which was my priority as no society or state can move forward without addressing this, secondly, illicit drug trafficking which impacts the youth of the country and third issue was the road fatalities”

“We started day to day analysis of the crime in a very corporate manner. We installed around 50,000 CCTV cameras all over the state and started something called predictive policing or evidence based policing and the result was tremendous. The crime rate dropped by 30 per cent and all heinous crimes were stopped,” he said.

Sharing the prestigious recognitions the state police has received, Kundu said: “For any police force the highest recognition is the Presidential Police Cadres and we are the 7th state to receive this recognition in the country.”

“In addition to this, the state has retained the first position in CCTNS- Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems for two consecutive years.”

Talking about addressing drug trafficking in the state, DGP Kundu said: “We are using maximum tools that are available and all the laundered money of the drug traffickers is attached and frozen. We destroy the drugs on a weekly basis.” /BI/