GHAZIABAD: Across UP, 136 police stations have registered at least 500 FIRs each in 2017. This has been revealed in a response to an RTI query by Lucknow-based social activist Nutan Thakur. Four of the top five police stations in terms of maximum number of FIRs filed are in Ghaziabad. And on top of the chart is Indirapuram police station. The figures have opened up the debate on the introduction of the commissionerate system of policing in UP.“Every minor complaint of crime gets registered as an FIR in Noida and Ghaziabad. An analysis will be required to figure out if crimes have indeed increased. Population in Noida and Ghaziabad is high. Floating population is also sizeable in these cities. It is a debatable issue if commissionerate system should indeed be introduced in these cities,” former UP police chief Jagmohan Yadav told TOI.Amongst all major states in the country, UP stands out for not having a commissionarate system in place for cities having a population over 10 lakh. In NCR, Delhi and Gurgaon are already being governed by the commissionerate system.According to officials, the commissionerate system will help the police department to overcome challenges it faces in day-to-day management of law and order.The commissionerate will ensure preventive and magisterial powers are vested in cops, there are well-established economic offences wings and special cells in the police department and there is minute monitoring of cases through DCP-level officers who work under the overall leadership of an IG rank or ADG-rank commissioner.“The state government has been dragging its feet over the introduction of the commissionerate system for several years. It will be a good step forward to check crime. A mild increase in crime rate every year is a natural process due to urbanisation, industrialisation and population increase. The numbers in the RTI query might also be indicative of the fact that FIRs are being registered faithfully,” said another former police chief of UP, Prakash Singh.Ghaziabad police said effective steps are being undertaken in order to ensure crime rates in these particular police stations are curbed.“The city also receives a huge number of complaints pertaining to economic frauds. The crime branch is being bolstered as also the traffic department. The existing mechanism in the city is being strengthened as much as possible to meet the challenges,” said Ghaziabad SSP Vaibhav Krishna.

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