Guwahati, March 24: Staff shortage has been a major hurdle for police in the four trouble-torn districts of the Bodoland Territorial Council.

This came to light following a report tabled by the department-related Assembly standing committee on home in the House today.

The committee was constituted by the Speaker under rule 260 H(1) of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Assam Legislative Assembly to study and submit a report on the demands for grants made by the home department. It scrutinised relevant documents and papers and took the personal evidence of officials of the home department before preparing the report.

In the report, the committee observed that “there is shortage of manpower in the districts, particularly in the BTC districts, for which the police administration is severely handicapped”.

Staff crunch in the violence-scarred BTC districts of Kokrajhar, Udalguri, Baksa and Chirang is a matter of concern since the Bodo belt has witnessed violence over the past few years, leading to a huge loss of lives. The committee was informed by the home department that several posts had been created in the last couple of years but could not be filled up since the procedures that need to be complied with were time consuming. The committee was informed that around 2,000 posts in Assam police fall vacant in a year because of retirement or otherwise.

The home department will create a “training reserve” to temporarily fill up the posts during the gestation period between the retirement of serving personnel and the recruitment of fresh candidates.

The committee, headed by Congress MLA Rameswar Dhanowar, found that the proposed modern surveillance system in Guwahati was yet to be put in place. The panel recommended early implementation of the system to avert serial bomb blasts similar to the one on October 30 in 2008.

The home department told the panel that installation of 292 CCTVs at 91 locations in the city was under way. The committee recommended high security numberplates be made compulsory to check rise in theft of vehicles in the state. The panel, in its report, mentioned that the home department had informed it that zonal forensic science laboratories would be set up at Dibrugarh, Diphu, Tezpur, Bongaigaon and Silchar. On the functioning of foreigners’ tribunals and detection and deportation of foreign nationals, it was told that 32 tribunals were operational while four were yet to be functional.