Bengaluru: Three hundred and four senior police officers, both from the IPS and KSPS cadre, in the entire state have around 639 orderlies working for them at their residences - doing odd jobs such as driving, cooking, gardening, cleaning, washing dishes, washing clothes, taking the official’s children to schools, walking their dogs, etc.
Each orderly is a recruit to the police department into its armed reserve unit with the ranks of either police constable (PC) or head constable (HC). Each PC/HC draws a salary from the government ranging anywhere from Rs 20,000 to Rs. 30,000 depending on their seniority in service. “To be precise, for all the orderlies who are working at the senior police officers’ homes doing odd jobs, the cost to exchequer is estimated to be more than Rs 15 crore annually,” said A.R.S. Kumar, a RTI activist and an advocate.
He had sought the information from the office of the DG-IGP about the orderlies granted to senior police officers in the state, as he was inquisitive about the police constables, who have been recruited by the department for policing work, but end up working at the homes of senior officers. “This was a system followed during the British Raj where the officials were known to have orderlies for doing odd jobs and this still prevails, while senior police officers themselves draw a handsome six-digit salaries for themselves from the government,” he said.
While a circular from the DG-IGP’s office clearly demarcates the scale of orderlies prescribed for senior police officials, ranging from the rank of DGP/Addl. DGP/IGP to ACPs/DySPs and police officers of the corresponding ranks, information obtained through an RTI application proved otherwise.
According to the information furnished by the DG-IGP’s office to Kumar on February 24, most of the senior police officials were misusing the privilege by taking orderlies more than the prescribed numbers, while a few of them were honestly following the norms.
While former DG & IGP Lalrokhuma Pachuau, had a privilege of having six orderlies, he had availed only three, whereas the current incumbent Om Prakash has availed six orderlies. Raghavendra H Auradkar had availed seven orderlies, while he is entitled only for six. IGP ranked police officers are entitled to have only four orderlies each, but Syed Ulfath Hussain, IGP and Bhaskar Rao IGP have seven orderlies.
Senior police officers who have availed lesser number of orderlies than they were entitled include M.N. Reddi, city police commissioner (two), R.P Sharma, ADGP Railways (two), Seemant Kumar Singh and N. Shivakumar with (one each).
Senior police officers and the number of orderlies they have:
Lalrokhuma Pachuau (Rtd DG-IGP) - 3
Om Prakash DG IGP - 6
Sushant Mahapatra - 6
M.N. Reddi - 2
Alok Mohan - 5
Sanjay Sahay - 5
Raghavendra H Auradkar - 7
Syed Ulfath Hussein - 7
Bhaskar Rao - 7
Parashivamurthy - 7
Harisekharan - 5
BNS Reddy - 6
Pranab Mohanty - 5
Alok Kumar - 3
S. Ravi - 3
Roopa M - 5
Hemanth Nimbalkar - 4
Krishna Bhat - 5
Abhishek Goyal - 3
Sonia Narang - 3
Ravindra Prasad - 3
M.A. Saleem - 4
Praveen Sood - 3
Soumendu Mukherjee - 5
Gagandeep - 3
Bureaucrats, MLAs too have orderlies
Apart from working at homes of the senior police officers’, a good number of these orderlies have also been deputed to work at the houses of bureaucrats, MLAs, MPs and Ministers.
