More than 100 Saanjh Kendras or service centers will come up in Punjab to look into the grievances of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). The Punjab Police have authorized the establishment of these centers in a move that aims to make it easier for NRIs to register their complaints.
The state already has 15 police stations that have been set up specially to look into the complaints of NRIs, the Hindustan Times reported. Since many districts do not have these police stations, complainants now have to travel to different districts to lodge their grievances. The establishment of Saanjh Kendras will save the time of the NRIs who wish to approach the government for redressal of issues.
“For example, people from Mansa were travelling to Bathinda to register complaints as the jurisdiction is with that police station. Those from Tarn Taran had to visit Amristar; and Sangrur’s NRI police station was covering Barnala too,” Ishwar Singh, the inspector general of police (IGP), NRI affairs, was quoted as saying in the report.
The NRI complainants can also register their problems online by visiting the web portal of Saanjh Kendra: www.ppsaanjh.in. These centers are located at the headquarters of all the police district and commissionerate as well as at 114 sub-divisional levels. While inspectors are posted at district-level Saanjh Kendras, assistant sub-inspectors or sub-inspectors oversee the ones at sub-division level Kendras.
Plans are also afoot to “restructure” the NRI police station system. “At these police stations in Sangrur, Ferozepur and Gurdaspur, for instance, the number of complaints is low, hence the staff don’t get enough work. Once the Saanjh Kendra experiment for NRIs’ complaints is fully successful, these stations can be closed down to use the force in routine policing,” a DGP-rank officer said, the publication reported.
These centers also registered complaints of marital discord earlier. However, after a Supreme Court ruling which stated that all marital disputes will first have to be sent to a family welfare committee constituted at the district and sessions level, the workload at these Kendras has come down. “That is why a committee led by the DGP (director general of police) decided to use the staff posted in these centers for NRI disputes too,” the report quoted an official as saying.
“Saanjh, a collaborative effort of police and community, takes the philosophy down to the grassroots through sub divisional Saanjh Kendras and police station Saanjh Kendras,” the Punjab Police stated on the Saanjh website. It added that a statewide IT platform with centralized server at the police headquarters linked to every Saanjh Kendra enabled centralized data uploading and access, providing citizens with copies of FlRs, untraced reports, no objection certificates, etc., at a click of a button, in a time bound frame.