Rs 2500 per personnel per month wef April 2024
Imkong Walling
Dimapur | March 31
The Nagaland Police will do away with the traditional food procurement system to feed its armed units, as per a recent state government decision. Each personnel of the armed units will be allocated Rs 2,500 per month replacing the prevailing centralized system of provisioning food items through civilian vendors/suppliers contracted by the government.
The decision to do away with the existing system was taken at the Chief Ministerial level reportedly in consultation with the Deputy Chief Minister, in charge of Home, per an Office Memorandum issued by the Additional Chief Secretary and Finance Commissioner on March 22, 2024. It said that the direction was “for fixation of Rs 2500/- per month per eligible Police Personnel for purchase of ration to be released in advance every month in lieu of present system with effect from April 2024.” The Committee for Ration Expenditure Rationalisation was further directed to verify and submit all pending bills relating to ration expenditure upto March 31, 2024, and work out the modalities for implementing the new system at the earliest.
This was followed up with a directive from the Home Department’s Police General Branch, on March 28, to the Director General of Police (DGP), Nagaland, to convey the cancelling of indents or extension of orders to the vendors/suppliers for supplying “Dry, Wet and CPR ration items” to all the NAP and NAP (IR) battalions, including the Nagaland Armed Police Training Centre in Chümoukedima.
Implications
There however remained a blank on the practical implications or how the new system would be implemented. There was no clarity on whether the allotted amount per head will go directly to the individual accounts or routed through the unit commandants.
One of the main concerns in the mind of the state police rank and file revolved around how it would impact the NAP (IR) battalions, which are primarily operational units.
The DGP Rupin Sharma, when contacted, said that there would be advantages as well as disadvantages and modalities will have to be worked out to implement the government decision.
According to other police officials, there are other state police and central paramilitary forces, which already have such a system in place. “It would be too early to call, if it is going to be a good thing or a bad thing,” said one.
The latest message from the Police Headquarters, Kohima, dated March 30, directed all the 15 armed units “not to take ration from previous suppliers” with effect from April 1. Pending the state government “providing an appropriate amount for purchase of unit ration,” all the unit commandants were further directed “to adjust ration from the existing stock for the time being until further order.” It made no mention of the amount stated in the March 22 memo from the Finance Commissioner.
Existing system
In the existing Nagaland Police ration procurement system, supply of foodstuff and other items are outsourced to private contractors like in the army. The supplied food items, which in official parlance are classified as “Dry Ration, Wet Ration and Centrally Procured Rations (CPR),” are then apportioned to each unit.
Dry Ration generally includes lentils, rice, salt and so on, while Wet Ration includes perishables like meat, egg, potato and onion supplemented by seasonal vegetables. CPR includes milk, cooking oil, tea leaves and dry chilli.
All the armed units were allocated Dry Ration once a month, while perishables were supplied twice a month. The NAP units, mostly deployed to static duties, were supplied meat/egg twice a month, while the NAP (IR) units, engaged with operational duties, got the said food items thrice a week.
Sources however claimed that the food messes stopped getting the usual quota of meat/egg from sometime around last year. This, however, could not be officially corroborated.
All the operational armed units run their own common food mess. But for the personnel from the armed units attached to other units for static duties or desk jobs, each are entitled to receive a monthly quota of Dry and Wet ration.
