New Delhi, Mar 5: The number of police personnel per one lakh of population in India is 142.69 police personnel for every one lakh population, as per data compiled by the Bureau of Police Research and Development.

No information as to the police and population ratio of other countries is being compiled by BPR&D.

However, as per the report prepared by UN Division for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs available on the web site of the United Nations released on March31, 2005, such ratio in some of the countries are like, Italy (559.0), Mexico (491.8), Saudi Arabia (386.5) and Belgium (357.5) which have much higher Police-Population ratio than India (136.4) during the year 2002 for every 1,00,000 (one hundred thousands) population.

As per the VII Schedule to the Constitution of India ‘Police’ and ‘law and order’ are State subjects. Therefore, the primary responsibility to decide about the composition of their police forces, as also modernizing and equipping them adequately, to face the challenges to internal security, is on the State Governments.

However, the Central Government has been advising all the State Governments to fill up the existing vacancies of police personnel and outsource some of the non-core police duties, which will also save manpower and promote police-community partnership. (ANI)