Healing touch for kin of SPOs killed in Naxal violence

With Naxal violence causing heavy casualties among Special Police Officers, the Union Home Ministry has decided to raise three-fold the compensation money given to them to Rs 3 lakh.

SPOs, who are local youth appointed on a honorarium basis under the provisions of the Police Act, have been a soft target of the Maoists and in the deadliest attack by the ultras in Chhattisgarh this year 39 of them were killed in a single incident.

Home Ministry sources said the SPOs earlier used to get a compensation of only Rs 1 lakh while regular security personnel got Rs 3 lakh.

The decision to pay compensation to SPOs at par with regular security personnel was taken on Tuesday at a meeting of the Security Related Expenditure chaired by Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Home Ministry Mahendra Kumawat.

The SRE scheme reimburses expenditure incurred by the states on ammunition, training and upgrading police posts. At present, 76 districts in nine states badly affected by Naxal violence are covered under the scheme, the sources said.

Out of an annual budget of Rs.50 crore under SRE, Rs.14 crore has already been released till August this year and an equal amount will be released soon for making ex-gratia payments, a senior MHA official said.

The SRE scheme was comprehensively revised in 2005 to enhance the level of utilisation of funds and so far, Rs 175.55 crore has been disbursed to the States under the scheme.

During 2005-06, the total budget outlay of Rs 45 crore was spent as against the average expenditure of Rs 9-10 crore in the previous years.

Naxal-hit states have found the scheme very useful in improving ground level police response in dealing with the problem, described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the single biggest threat to internal security. The scheme has been extended for a further period of five years till 2011.

SPOs suffered heaviest casualties in Chhattisgarh in March this year when Naxalites stormed a police camp in Ranibodli in Dantewada district in south Bastar. Of the 55 security personnel killed in the fiercest attack of its kind in the state, 39 were SPOs.