By IANS,
Chandigarh: Over 1,300 Punjab Police officials were given out of turn promotions Monday.
Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal decorated the officials with stars at the ceremony at the Punjab Armed Police complex in Jalandhar, 150 km from here.
Exhorting the police officials to work towards more professional policing, Badal said that the Punjab Police had shown good results in busting militant modules, seizure of narcotics and tackling law and order situations.
This is the second time that the Punjab government has done out-of-turn mass promotions. In September 2011, 5,199 police officials were promoted.
Badal said that the Punjab Police force was a demoralized unit till some years back due to depletion in the cadre strength, stagnation of personnel especially at constabulary rank and with no investment on modernization.
Stressing steps taken by the Punjab government has put the force back on its feet, he said nearly 20,000 recruitments have been made at all levels in the force, record promotions have been granted and several welfare schemes initiated.
He said that the Punjab government has taken a number of steps to expand, re-organize and modernize the state police so that it could met the multifarious challenges of militancy, smuggling, drug-peddling, cyber crime and street crime.
Among the recent initiatives, police set up a dedicated force for night policing, launched the Women Armed Special Protection Squads (WASPS), sexual assault response teams (SART) and set up women police stations.
Badal asked the police officials to be professional but have a humane face too while dealing with common people.