CAG report card finds Delhi Police lacking

NEW DELHI: The performance audit report carried out by Comptroller and Auditor General of India on the functioning of Delhi Police between 2013 and 2019 has highlighted several shortcomings.
CAG said that the Union home ministry “had approved 12,518 posts with advice to operationalise 3,139 posts first and then the remaining 9,379 after deployment of 3,139 personnel on ground. However, due to failure of Delhi Police to recruit against these 3,139 posts, the remaining 9,379 approved posts could not be operationalised (August 2020).”

It also said the representation of women in Delhi Police was 11.7%, much lower than target of 33%, and added that housing satisfaction was quite low, with only 15,360 quarters available for around 80,000 personnel.

Questions were also raised about Himmat Plus, the women’s safety app launched in 2018. “In spite of a sizeable expenditure (Rs18.5 lakh on development of Himmat Plus and Rs 6.8 crore on publicity of Himmat and Himmat Plus), the response to the app was lukewarm,” the CAG report noted. “Of the 1.7 lakh installs of Himmat/Himmat Plus App, there were 1.3 lakh uninstalls, leaving about 34,000 users as of May 2019, which was much less compared with users of the women’s safety apps of Bengaluru Police (50,482) and Maharashtra Police (84,000).”

The report also found problems with the procurement of Motor Vehicle Theft app and the subsequent functioning and veracity of data generated via the web application.



Only one of the 72 police stations test-checked by the auditors had staff as per norm. The report said the 35% staff shortage left cops under strain and forced to work long hours.

As for devices used by police, the CAG reported that Delhi Police was using a 20-year trunking system that had outlived its life by a decade. “Proposals for upgradation were initiated 10 years ago, but not even tenders have been finalised yet,” observed CAG, adding that the number of wireless sets declined from 9,638 in June 2009 to 6,172 in June 2019. The force, the report said, had installed 3,870 CCTV cameras in Delhi, but the percentage of functioning cameras was very low.

Deficiencies were also noted in the anti-terror unit, ranging from availability of vehicles, protective equipment like bulletproof jackets and arms and ammunition. Similar concerns were raised for SWAT, security and the cybercrime unit.

The report noted vulnerabilities in the security architecture of Delhi Police’s Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System, largely due to an obsolete technology stack on which CCTNS was based. Also reported to be functioning “sub-optimally” was C-MAPS, the joint project of Delhi Police and ISRO-ADRIN that maps crime data and generation of actionable information. “The planned project objectives have been abandoned and its utility is questionable,” CAG said.

The audit expressed concern at the 275% jump in crime incidents in 2019 against 2013 and the rise of heinous crime from 4,159 in 2013 to 5,185 in 2019.