Market Yard police station opens with skeleton staff

A week after the opening of the long-awaited Koregaon Park police station, city police chief Meeran Chadhha Borwankar and Municipal Commissioner Mahesh Pathak jointly inaugurated the Market Yard police station yesterday.u00a0

Initially, the Market Yard police station will have to carry out its day-to-day operations with a skeleton staff. At present, one police officer and 20 policemen have been made available for the station as against the sanctioned staff-strength of 20 officers and 135 policemen for any police station.u00a0

The police station was inaugurated at 11.30 am in the presence of District Collector Viskas Deshmukh, PMC commissioner Mahesh Pathak, police commissioner Meeran Borwankar, Joint Commiss-ioner of Police Sanjeevkumar Singhal, Additional Commiss-ioner of Police (North Region) Suresh Mekhala and Additional Commissioner of Police (South Region) Chandrakant Kum-bhar, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Anant Shinde and senior PMC officials.u00a0

The Commissioner of Police said, "I appeal to my staff to ensure citizen's participation at all levels to overcome the staff shortage. As per the usual parameters, 20 officers and 135 policemen are sanctioned for all other police stations, but for this police station only one officer and 20 policemen have been sanctioned so far.

Considering that we let our officials work for eight hours, we need 150 policemen to run day-to-day work of a policeu00a0station."u00a0

She added that the police station was sanctioned in 2009 but inauguration was delayed following procurement of land.u00a0"There was consistent demand from Market Yard Committee members to start the police station at the earliest. But the Municipal Commissioner has informed us that process to change user of the land allotted for this purpose will take at least one and half year. Administration Officer of Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) B J Deshmukh has made a portion of APMC building available to us for the purpose," Borwankar said.

Till the time the construction of the police station isu00a0not completed, the Marketu00a0Yard police station will be functioning out of the existing Market yard police chowky at Gultekdi.u00a0Senior Police Inspector Raghunath Jadhav, who will be the in-charge of the police station that falls under Zone II, said, "Ensuring safety and security of farmers and merchants along with maintaining law and order in the area covering 5.5 square kilometres is the challenge before us."

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone II) Raghunath Khaire said that maintaining law and order in the area will be easier with the opening of the Market Yard police station.u00a0"The police station will also be helpful for the farmers, traders and people who regularly come to APMC," he said.u00a0