Largest batch of over 1,700 constables join Assam Police

Dergaon, April 6 (PTI) A total of 1,715 newly-recruited unarmed constables of the Assam Police, including 535 women, passed out of the Lachit Borphukan Police Academy on Thursday, making it the largest batch in the state’s history, officials said.

This 178th batch of the Assam Police is the first batch of the academy, which was upgraded from the earlier Police Training College that was set up in 1947, they said.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Director-General of Police (DGP) GP Singh took the salute from the new recruits at the passing out parade at the academy’s campus in Dergaon in Golaghat district.

“You will face a lot of challenges in duty. With courage, integrity, honesty and accountability, you will have to serve the people and the nation,” Sarma told the new recruits.

He said that at times, the distance between people and police grows due to misuse of the uniform, leading to hatred towards the force in the minds of the common man.

“We need to remain a friend of the people. Beating up poor rickshaw pullers must be a thing of the past. The lathi, gun and courage of Assam Police must be used against criminals only,” he said.

Sarma said the atmosphere in police stations was not very people-friendly due to decades of fights against insurgents, but that situation has changed now.

“Assam Police is now leading a visionary fight against drugs. In the last two years, it registered 4,646 cases under the NDPS Act and arrested 7,723 people. Similarly, 203 cases of human trafficking were filed, 173 traffickers were nabbed and 358 people rescued,” he said.

“With the increase in strength, the Assam Police’s operations against drugs and other social menaces will get a boost,” he added.

The government created five commando battalions in the last two years, and is going to recruit 6,373 personnel in the forest department in the future, Sarma said.

The Assam Police has two branches of constables — armed branch (AB) and unarmed branch (UB). AB constables are issued firearms, while the UB personnel are deployed with lathis only.

DGP Singh said, “In the last two years, we have recruited 14,315 personnel, including this 1,715 persons, in different ranks of Assam Police. After this, another batch of 4,500 personnel will pass out in September-October.”

Once these 19,000 personnel are recruited, there will be no vacancies in Assam Police, which will be a rare force in the country to have achieved this feat, he said.

“In Assam Police, we never had a passing out parade of this magnitude. This is historically the largest batch,” Singh said.