SC rejects Bihar govt's plan to fill up police vacancies

"You are making fun of this court," an anguished Supreme Court told the Bihar government today, pulling it up for seeking two years time to appoint 174 stenographers in the police and rejecting its roadmap to fill up the vacancies in the force.

The apex court, which is monitoring the filling up of police vacancies in all states, asked the Nitish Kumar government to revise its roadmap and submit a fresh one.

"This proposal is completely unacceptable. You want time till 2019 to fill up the posts of 174 stenographers. This is not done. You are making fun of this court. You can hold one single test for stenographers and recruit them," a bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said.

The bench, also comprising Justices D Y Chandrachud and S K Kaul, said it was angry with the way the roadmap was presented to it and asked the Bihar government to file a fresh proposal for filling up of vacancies in police by Friday.

"You should now file a fresh affidavit explaining a reasonable roadmap. If you do not revise it, then you will be in serious trouble. Revise and come on Friday or we are going to send someone who prepared this roadmap to jail," the bench said. With regard to West Bengal, the bench accepted the roadmap given by the state and asked it to fill up the 25,487 vacancies of constable by 2020.

The West Bengal government informed the court that the process for filling up police vacancies was on and by July 31, a total of 4357 posts would be filled up.

The apex court directed the state government to fill up 8000 posts of constables every year from 2018 till 2020 and "meticulously adhere" to the time-line. In case any vacancies remains, then it should be filled up by 2021, it said, adding that for any breach of the time schedule, the concerned DGP (Recruitment) and Additional Secretary (Home) would be personally responsible.

The state government said that out of 1173 vacancies of junior constables, 465 have been filled up as on date and by 2020, all the remaining vacancies will also be filled up.

It told the bench that till date, it has 253 vacancies for the post of Sub Inspectors and this number would rise to 3175 by 2018. The apex court directed that the state government should fill up 700 posts this year and from 2018 till 2020, it should fill up 800 annually.