The J&K police has offered a handsome salary of Rs 20000 per-month, apart from “fair and transparent recruitment process”, in a bid to woo youth to join the force during its maiden “digital recruitment drive” being held from November 22.
According to officials, at least one lakh youth from three J&K regions have applied for 4000 positions of constables to be filled up during the “first-ever transparent digital recruitment drive.”
Interestingly, police is offering what it calls a handsome salary to the new recruits. “A new recruit will get at least Rs 20000 as monthly salary,” said LMohanty, Additional Director General of Police, Home Guards, who is also the chairman of Police Recruitment Board. “These new faces in police would be humane, qualified and disciplined. One would see well-mannered policemen in the field and on the streets.”
Mohanty said the drive is “going to be transparent. There will be an RFID chip for every candidate that will record his run. Similarly push-ups would also be video-graphed. The entire recruitment process would be computerized and will have no human interference. There will be no scope for any influence, faults, or confusion. If the candidate claims he did well and was still dropped, we can show him his videos and say why he was dropped.”
Mohanty said: “We are using bio-metric devices to ensure the smooth recruitment.”
The police officer said they have received one-lakh applications for 4000 posts of constables from three regions of J&K—Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh.
“We have received around 50,000 applications from Kashmir division including Leh and Kargil districts and similar number of applications from Jammu region,” Mohanty said. “There are only 4000 posts of police constables to be filled up. Of these, 1000 are for Executive police and 3000 for Armed.”
According to the police data, very less youth have showed their interest in joining the police force. “Only 2760 youth from entire Srinagar district have applied for these posts,” a police officer said.
He said youth of Shopian district of South Kashmir too have shown little interest for the recruitment drive. “Only 1766 youth have applied from Shopian district, 7577 from Anatnnag, 4137 from Pulwama and 4428 from Kulgam,” the officer said.
Mohanty sought to downplay lack of interest of youth in joining the police force, saying, “There are other job avenues for the youth in Srinagar as compared to those in rural areas.”
“This could be a reason why we have received less applications from Srinagar district,” he said.
Sameer Ahmed, a youth from Shopian district, said the main source of their livelihood is the apple production.
“Pro-freedom sentiments runs deep among the youth of Shopian, especially after the rape and murder of Asiya and Neolofar in 2009. So they are little interested in joining the force which is seen as no different from Army or CRPF. And when we can sustain our livelihood, what is the need to join police?” he said.
A police official based in Srinagar said lack of interest among the Valley youth for joining the police force “is a cause of concern”, indicating that the proposed drive “may not yield youth from the targeted areas.”
At present, the total strength of J&K police is 80,000 and the number is set to touch one lakh with the fresh recruitment drive and the proposal of raising five more IRP battalions.
