The Bihar government has announced plans to raise an industrial security force to provide security to banks and other financial institutions in the wake of a spate of bank robberies in Bihar. The chief minister has asked the banks to formulate their standard requirements related to security personnel, as well as the numbers needed, and provide them to the government. These would be incorporated while raising the industrial security force.
“If you decide the benchmark and numerical requirement, we will also recruit personnel accordingly. However, the recruitment, framing of rules, training and deployment will take a minimum of three years,” said Bihar CM Nitish Kumar. The CM was speaking at the 56th State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) meeting organised in the state capital to discuss various issues and progress in banking facilities, as well as coordination and joint implementation of development programmes by all financial institutions operating in the state. Bihar has 6,661 bank branches and around 6,200 ATMs.
Nabard Chief General Manager Ranjit Kumar Das, SBI General Manager Abhijit Dutta, RBI General Manager Brijraj and several ministers and others were present on the occasion.
Reeling out figures related to criminal incidents involving banks, the Chief Minister said six bank dacoities have taken place in the state in 2016 in which 18 people have been arrested, 10 firearms were seized and Rs 58.35 lakh of the looted amount recovered so far. In the same vein the CM hit out at the opposition for criticising the government on jungle raj in the state. “Some have the disease of saying ‘jungle raj’. Small incidents are given bumper publicity. On the other hand we feel bad over every such incident and raise questions on them from top to bottom,” he added.
The CM also suggested that banks make stringent checks about the background of private security guards that are deployed at the branches, and always give a thought to the kind of people that are used for this purpose, for example whether to employ local people for such jobs or hire them from outside. He also asked them to keep their security equipment and CCTV cameras functional.
