Focus on safety of citizens: Amit Shah tells trainee IPS officers

NEW DELHI: Union home minister Amit Shah on Tuesday asked the Indian Police Service (IPS) probationers to focus on the safety of citizens and the protection of their rights while adopting a ruthless approach to eliminate anti-national activities.
“The time has come for us to focus on our core work. Now is the time to protect the rights of citizens and make efforts to prevent atrocities against them. Protecting the rights of the poor, children and women are of prime importance,” Shah told probationers of the 2023 batch of the IPS (76th batch) in the national capital.
Shah said the biggest medal for any police officer posted as a district superintendent of police, a district police chief, in their youth would be that they are remembered by the people of the district for their good work for years.
“All the young officers will have to work with a ruthless approach to eliminate anti-national activities. While doing police work, the security of the nation should always be in our mind and our eyes should always be open to ensure the security of the nation,” the home minister told the young officers.
“The trainee IPS officers should contemplate and reflect on the time at which they have become IPS officers. They should contemplate this because the batch that will emerge as IPS officers this time will have a bigger responsibility than the previous 75 batches.
“The trainee officers should reflect because it is completely up to them and the batches coming after them whether our country will change the scale and enter the next generation of policing or not,” he added.
Asserting that “no one had the courage to insult our borders and our army”, Shah said, “we have done a lot to provide tight security to our borders and the rest is being done”.
“Earlier, Jammu and Kashmir, the north-east and left-wing extremism-affected areas were the three sores, but now we have succeeded in reducing violence by 70% in these three places. Today, Indian agencies have complete dominance in these three hotspots”, he said.
“The time has come that the police system should come forward to protect the fundamental rights of our citizens, the police system should be alert to minimise the crimes happening within the borders of the country and the time has come that we should be able to give justice to the citizen in the shortest possible time,” he added.
Shah underlined that the security of the nation does not mean only the security of the borders.
“The nation is made of its citizens. The security of the citizen is the basis of the security of the nation”.
In the Indian Police Service 2023 batch, a total of 188 officer trainees, including 54 women officers, have completed the basic course training phase-1. After two weeks of training with various Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) and Central Police Organisations (CPOs) in Delhi, the IPS trainee officers will undergo 29 weeks of district practical training in their respective cadres.