Jamshedpur, Feb. 6: The Jharkhand Police Association would go on mass leave across the state from March 10 to pressurise the government to accept their long-standing five-point charter of demands.

JPA’s general secretary Chandra Gupta Singh told The Telegraph that the government has not been considerate enough to redress the basic problem of police officials.

He said the decision to go on mass leave, after a round of agitation like wearing black-badges three months ago, testified to the fact that the government was not serious about the demands of police officials.

Singh said their main demands were resumption of time-bound promotion, allowance for remote area posting, resumption of vehicle-maintenance allowance and hike in the uniform allowance.

He said about 5000 members of the JPA would be going on mass leave from midnight of March 10 till March 15 midnight.

Speaking on time-bound promotion the JPA general secretary said: “Most police officials have not been promoted during the last 25 years. On the contrary, those who joined the department through the Union or State Public Service Commission are being promoted according to rules.”

“A police officer who joined the department as deputy superintendent of police 25 years ago, today he is at least a deputy inspector-general of police but despite working for the same period of time, an assistant sub-inspector has remained in the same post,” he added.

He said such discrepancies on the part of state police authorities would not be tolerated any more.

The JPA has been demanding 25 per cent of the salary as an additional allowance for those posted in remote and extremist infested areas.

While justifying the demand, Singh said: “To curb extremism, the government wants better policing in troubled zones but fails to realise that incentives to policemen may yield the desired results.”

He said: “Is it not practical to make such demand? Why should the policemen put their heart and soul in combating terrorism without being paid anything extra.”

The JPA general secretary, now posted in the capital, said the state police authorities should refrain from transferring the association’s office-bearers. He said one of their demands is to stop the practice of transferring key leaders of the association to remote places, adding that the association would ensure none of the office-bearers is transferred without their consent. As such transfers weakened the association.