Delhi Police enhances imprest amount to Rs 2 lakh per station to aid investigations
New Delhi: The Delhi Police has raised the imprest amount for each police station to Rs 2 lakh, which used to be between 10,000 and 25,000 till
now, to help investigating officers carry out their duty effectively and reduce crime in the national Capital.
An order in this regard was issued by the office of Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana on November 23. There are 15 police districts in the city and 178 police stations.
The order said the imprest amount allotted to each police station has now been enhanced to Rs 2 lakh, of which Rs 1 lakh is exclusively for "investigation" and another Rs 1 lakh for "miscellaneous" expenses at the police station level. The imprest money, also known as permanent advance, is the decentralised financial power given at the police station level to meet their immediate operational expenditure, police said.
Earlier, Rs 2 lakh was allotted to each police district and the head of the district
then allotted a specific amount to each police station depending on its requirement which ranged between Rs 10,000-25,000 police said.
"The expenditure incurred by IOs on daily basis has been enhanced to aid in professional investigation. A need was felt to increase the amount as with time the burden of cases on IOs has increased and they have to make day-to-day expenditure during the course of investigation," Delhi Police PRO Chinmoy Biswal said. Some units have been assigned higher amounts. For example, Delhi Police's Metro and Railways units have been allotted an imprest money of Rs 5 lakhs each, while the IGI Airport unit has been allotted Rs 4 lakh.
The Crime Branch, Special Cell, Vigilance, Cyber, Economy Offences Wing (EOW) and Special Police Unit for Women and Children (SPUWAC) have been allotted Rs 2 lakhs each, the order stated.
According to police, the permanent advance is used in meeting a plethora of continued expenditure which crop up in the day-to-day functioning including expenses related to travel, video and photography, purchase of hard disk, examination of samples, transportation of unidentified dead bodies and getting post-mortem done.
"The problem becomes acute when such circumstances crops up during outstation visits when teams are sent on raids," a senior police official said.
"For all this purpose, as per government rules, imprest money was already allotted to police stations by their district heads but since the amount allotted was much lower compared to the expenditure incurred, the imprest money has been enhanced now to ease the burden on IOs," he said.
Police officials said they also need to carry out miscellaneous works such as repairing of vehicles, computers or printers, infrastructure work or expenses for getting case files ready or organising citizen committee meetings.
The role and duties of local police have also undergone much diversions and modifications which had explained the horizon of its working structure, they said. Listing the terms and conditions to be adhered to by the Head of the Offices (HOOs) while ensuring optimum utilisation of the permanent advance, the order said the imprest money will be drawn by the head of office concerned.
