In recent days, the grade pay agitation has been in the spotlight after the Bapunagar cop Hardik Pandya marched in front of the Gujarat Assembly to demand a salary hike.
The state government set up a committee to look into the demands and compare the pay scales of cops in other states.
However, the housing projects taken up by the state government for cops can well be the envy of other states. The state government is building 8,368 two-bedroom apartments for police personnel in all districts. The rent-free accommodation will have good facilities and is aimed to ease the problem of police housing. About 320 of these apartments are being built in Ahmedabad. The houses are being built by the Gujarat Police Housing Corporation.
The 2-BHK apartments are an upgrade from the 1-BHK ones earlier planned. Gujarat DGP Ashish Bhatia said, “The chief minister had announced about a year back that the size of the apartments that we give to the police personnel will be bigger. We have already handed over about 100 of them to the personnel and are building more. We will build 8,000-plus homes in phases.”
J B Bhalani, architect for GPHC, told Mirror that the construction cost of each apartment is Rs 17-18 lakh. “The total cost of 8,368 units will be about Rs 1,400 to Rs 1,500 crore.”
In relation to the agitation, preliminary inquiries have been registered against 571 police personnel across Gujarat and 19 offences have been registered against people for inciting police to express disaffection, 25 persons have been arrested.
Besides, police chiefs in corporation and district areas have been asked to hear out complaints of policemen if any and take immediate action.
As many as 299 meetings of the complaints committee have been held to address the issues while 3,521 more meetings have been planned.
Diwali gift for cops
Police personnel in Ahmedabad rural received Diwali gift on the eve of the festival.
A total of 182 police personnel in the state were given promotion, while 12 police personnel were given an increase in pay grade. The Ahmedabad rural police has promoted 105 unarmed police constables to unarmed head constables, 33 armed police constables to armed head constables, 38 unarmed head constables to unarmed assistant sub-inspectors.
