41 per cent of rifles with prison personnel unserviceable,
says CAG report
Bhubaneswar: More than 40 per cent of rifles used by the police manning prisons of the state are unserviceable, says a report from the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) released Thursday.
The report, based on a survey of prisons in the state in March 2017, for the period 2014-17, says that while 96 (41.02 per cent) of the 234 rifles in the 11 jails studied were unserviceable, while remaining five jails had no arms and ammunition.
The report, pertaining to prison reforms, after pointing out that none of the jails “conducted Annual Target Practice” goes on to add that during 2014-17, “21 prisoners had managed to escape due to insufficient security in the jails”. According to the report, jail authorities had not complied with the provisions of Odisha Jail Manual relating to security in prisons.
The Centre’s Model Prison Manual (MPM), the report advises, needs to be adopted by the state government before it introduces other necessary reforms in prisons of the state. MPM, introduced January 2016, envisaged conversion of jails into correctional homes; but it could not be taken up by the state as a result of which several other matters such as establishment of advisory boards, Prison Development Board, monitoring and research on jails could not be taken up, the report says.
The report also took a dig at the home department for its failure to submit utilization certificate. “The home department did not submit Utilisation Certificate for Rs 75 crore received from the Thirteenth Finance Commission. As a result, Government of India did not release the remaining Rs 25 crore, which was a loss to the state exchequer,” the report says.
The CAG report also draws attention to the overcrowding of jails. It says jail authorities were keeping 472 convicts and 1,988 undertrial prisoners in the same ward without separate enclosures. This is in contravention of provisions of the Odisha Jail Manual.
On security lapses in prisons, the report points out that five prisons had installed 2G cell phone jammers and that these devices are unable to block 3G signals. This rendered the expenditure of Rs 3.91 crore on the jammers useless. Further, of the 873 walkie-talkies purchased at a cost of Rs 59.74 lakh, 257 were not working right when they were received.