Choki Sorath Police Training Academy Junagadh District News Gujarat India

13,000 constables and 868 sub-inspectors are being hired but four training academies can only support 1,640 personnel at a time.

The sudden recruitment of police personnel in the state on a large scale has left the police training departments in a fix as they have neither the capacity nor adequate trainers to manage it. The drive has also resulted in delaying the recruitment of sub-inspectors.

The four police training institutes in the state — Gujarat State Police Training Academy at Karai in Gandhinagar, Police Training Academy at Vadodara, at Police Training CollegeJunagadh City and SRP Training Centre also at Choki Sorath in Junagadh District — have a total capacity to accommodate only 1,640 police personnel while the drive is for recruiting 13,000 constables and 868 sub-inspectors.

Sudhir Sinha, ADGP (Law and Order), said: “Over 16,000 police personnel need to be trained this time, which is the case of the largest recruitment drive ever undertaken in one season. The institutes have a limited capacity and do not even have enough trainers.”

Sinha added: “Sensing the crunch, the state police has decided to postpone the recruitment of sub-inspectors, which was to take place by April-end. Now, it will be conducted six months later.

The candidates would be distributed among all the four institutes whose capacity would be possibly doubled. But it has not been decided as to how to manage the shortage of trainers.”

The first group of constables to undergo training would be SRPF recruits, who would be appointed by July. They will undergo eight months of training starting next month. This will be followed by other constables, who would be given four months of training.

Rajnish Rai, the principal of the SRP Police Training Centre at Choki Sorath, said: “We have not been told how the recruits would be accommodated. Candidates could possibly be sent out of Gujarat for training. But that depends on the permission. We were in a crunch situation last year also when more than 5,000 SRPF candidates were sent for training.”

Sources said some candidates may be sent out of Gujarat for training, but premier training institutes for NSG and BSF would not take more than four to five personnel from Gujarat at a time. In order to train all the recruits, the training period may be shortened, said sources.

The Karai Training Institute has been facing trainer crunch for a long time. Earlier also, the institute had to rope in retired servicemen for the work.

The state government had put a freeze on police recruitment in 1990, which had left 20,000 posts vacant last year.

The Gujarat Police have a sanctioned strength of 75,000 personnel.