Bengal civic volunteer issue: Governor seeks CM’s opinion on 12 points

West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose has sought the opinion of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the critical observations made by the Supreme Court against the system regarding the hiring of civic volunteers in the state police force

In a statement issued on the official X handle of 'Raj Bhavan Media Cell', the Governor has sought the Chief Minister’s opinion on 12 specific points.

These are -- the total number of civic volunteers engaged since 2021, the total amount paid to them, legal sanction for recruiting the civic volunteers, government orders under which such recruitment was made, their recruitment rules, system of conducting training for them before deployment, departments where civic volunteers are placed, duration of employment, total number of sanctioned posts in state government departments and the number of vacancies, total number of government employees recruited through open recruitment system and the reason for not filling up posts of permanent employees.

Recently, such a civic volunteer Sanjay Roy has been identified as the “sole prime accused” in the crime of a ghastly rape and murder of a junior doctor of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital.

In the statement, several lacunas in the system of recruiting civic volunteers in the state have been highlighted. These include lack of legal authority, unverified recruitment, political influence, inadequate training, limited accountability, potential abuse, qualification concerns and lack of transparency.

In fact, the particular observation that the civic volunteers are often seen as being under political control, undermining their impartiality is what the opposition parties in West Bengal have been vocal about for quite some time.

The Governor had been critical of the state government on the issue of R.G. Kar rape and murder tragedy. In September this year, a statement was issued by the 'Raj Bhavan Media Cell' where several questions were raised on the nature of the initial investigation carried out by Kolkata Police before the matter was handed over to CBI, one of which was the “hurried disposal of the body ignoring the wishes of the parents to retain it at least that day”.