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Andhra Pradesh Police is in urgent need of a helicopter for tackling emergency situations, particularly during anti-Maoist operations, but the procurement proposal is stuck in bureaucratic red tape.
Despite hundreds of crores of rupees flowing in from the Government of India for “modernisation of police force” to Andhra Pradesh, the State Government is somehow disinclined to grant the Police wish, highly-placed government sources said.
Naxal-hit Chhattisgarh is the only state that has an exclusive helicopter for use by the police, they said.
It was at the height of the Naxal movement in the state in the 1990s that the police first came up with the proposal for buying a helicopter.
The elite anti-Maoist force — Greyhounds — was supposed to use the chopper in its operations, especially in forest and remote areas, for movement and evacuation of personnel.
“Now that the Maoist menace in the state has reduced tremendously, the Government may not show interest in purchasing the chopper, but its need still exists,” a top Police official said.
“Take for instance the 2008 Balimela incident where about 38 of our Greyhounds personnel were killed in a Maoist attack in a reservoir. Had a chopper been available, the incident could have been averted,” pointed out the official who has been involved in several anti-Naxal operations.
The state-run AP Aviation Corp owned two helicopters — a Bell 430 and a Agusta Westland-139. The Bell was destroyed during a crash in the Nallamala forest killing Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy on September 2, 2009.
The AW-139 is used for ferrying the Chief Minister.
“It is in rarest of the occasions that we get to use the State Government chopper and that too if there is no VIP movement,” the police official said.
The Police are keen on a troop carrier helicopter that can ferry 25-30 persons in an emergency.
“We want a big chopper so that we can drop our forces wherever we want and pick them up from the interiors of forest or agency (tribal) areas,” the official said.
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