BANGALORE: The Karnataka State Police Housing Corporation (KSPHC) in association with the Bureau of Police Research and Development will formulate a plan to standardise construction of police stations, officers' buildings and police residential houses. All States had been asked to send their inputs for finalising the plan, which will be enforced by the Union Home Ministry.

Director-General of Police (Fire and Emergency Services) R. Srikumar said this while making a presentation on "police building norms" on the second day of the 37th All India Police Congress on Wednesday.

Mr. Srikumar, who was the Chairman of KSPHC, said the Union Home Ministry had assigned them the task of preparing a set of norms that need to be followed for police buildings. "Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil wants these `model' police buildings to be in such a way that people can distinctly identify them," he said.

The plan will lay down the essential features of buildings and provide for accommodating the facilities to meet local requirements, including future expansion plans. It prescribes the plinth area and the approximate cost of construction.

The police stations will be graded into six categories based on the sanctioned strength. The grade one will be a police station, generally a police outpost, which has a sanctioned strength of up to 10 persons. The grade two would be the police station where the number of personnel is between 10 and 20, grade three 20 and 40, grade four 40 and 60, grade five 60 and 100, and grade six will be the police station where personnel are 150 and more.

The essential features such as reception, wireless room, toilet, ramps for physically handicapped, will all come on the ground floor. The additional features such as rest rooms, gymnasium, conference hall, will come on the first floor.

The plan will provide for security fencing, steel gate and sentry posts for extremist affected areas. The plan provides for separation of public reception area from the area where sensitive activities such as wireless communication and police interrogation will be done, Mr. Srikumar said.

Director-General of Bureau of Police Research and Development N.C. Joshi said the plan was yet to take final shape because they were yet to visit places in the North East. They were awaiting inputs from other States. The designs and other details of the plan prepared by the corporation were recently presented to the Home Minister Shivraj Patil a week ago. It has been put on the website ksphc.org, Mr. Joshi said.

Earlier, corporation chairman D.V. Guruprasad made a presentation on the way they were building spacious and airy police buildings to the satisfaction of the police personnel. Laying stress on using environment-friendly initiatives such as rainwater harvesting, the buildings have been constructed to meet security needs in naxalite-affected areas.

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