Odisha: Rural areas posing challenge to cops

BHUBANESWAR: Even as Covid-19 situation remains grim in rural areas, enforcement activities have been lacking due to demographic and bigger jurisdiction issues.
Unlike urban police areas, the jurisdictions of rural police stations are vast, making it difficult for the under-staffed police stations to intensify crackdown on violators.
“Population under our police station is more than 1.5 lakh. Our police area is spread over 7 or 8 kilometres.We have only one patrolling van and 10 staff. It is not possible to take up monitoring and patrolling in all the villages multiple times a day,” said an officer of Narsinghpur police station in Cuttack district.
Due to the absence of adequate manpower and poor mobility, police have not been able to visit remote villages where the mask and social distancing norms have gone for a toss. Superintendents of police (SPs) too find it difficult to supervise enforcement activities during lockdown and weekend shutdown in rural belts.
A police van can patrol different localities several times a day in urban area. “In rural areas, we cannot even devote 30 minutes for enforcement drive in one village because we have to cover so many villages. This way the quality of the enforcement will be sub-standard,” an officer in Gop police station in Puri said.
In Odisha, maximum number of police stations are located in rural areas. Of the 628-odd police stations in the state, around 360 police stations are functional in rural areas and 176 in urban localities. The remaining are the special purpose police stations, including Crime Branch, traffic police stations, coastal police stations, cyber police stations, railway police stations, economic offences wing and special task force.
Police said during raids in villages, people stay indoors and comply with Covid-appropriate behaviour. But situation often comes back to square one the moment the cops leave the place.