Police in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh scored the lowest among all States when it came to perception of “sensitivity”, according to a survey conducted by Indian Police Foundation (IPF), a think tank run by retired IPS officers and academics.
“Based on the philosophy underlying the Prime Minister’s SMART policing idea, IPF constructed a survey framework to measure citizens’ perceptions from a perspective of public trust in police. Trust was identified as the overarching element of the SMART policing vision,” the survey report said.
The SMART scores are set on a scale of 1 to10 and are indicative of the levels of citizen satisfaction, a score of 10 being the highest level of satisfaction.
With a perception score of 5.74, Bihar ranked the lowest in police sensitivity, while the score for Uttar Pradesh was 5.81 followed by Chhattisgarh at 5.93.
With a score of 8.11 and 8.10, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana police topped the ranking.
In police responsiveness too, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh police scored the lowest while Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Assam scored the highest.
“Despite being attacked for insufficient sensitivity, declining public confidence and growing concerns about the quality of policing, a majority of citizens [a weighted average of 66.93%] believes that the police are doing their job well and strongly support the police,” the report said.
It added that the levels of popular satisfaction with the quality of policing was highest in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Assam, Kerala, Sikkim, Mizoram and Gujarat in that order, with an index value of seven or above, 19 States/UTs scored an index value between six and seven, while three States scored between five and six. The survey covered over 1.6 lakh respondents.
