Police force in Maharashtra to finally go cashless

Payments of all kinds, including salaries of the 2.5 lakh-strong Maharashtra police force, which includes Mumbai, will be done only through digital or cashless mode

For the first time since prime minister Narendra Modi asked people to go cashless while dealing with financial transactions, the Maharashtra police have decided to listen to him. Henceforth, payments of all kinds, including salaries of the 2.5 lakh-strong Maharashtra police force, which includes Mumbai, will be done only through digital or cashless mode.

An official circular to this effect was issued by inspector general of police (administration) Anup Kumar Singh recently, asking all units of the state police to use National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and digital mode to make payments. While the bulk of payments — the salaries of police officers and constables — is made in banks, henceforth even this will be done using a cashless method.

Cash nahi chalegi
Officers in the DGP's office said a circular from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and the ministry of electronics and information and technology, had asked the police to go cashless. It has further asked the police to train staff on how to use the methods, to ensure that digital payments are safely made by police personnel.

Apart from salaries, police purchase a lot of equipment such as weapons and vehicles to upgrade and keep up with the times. Officers said most of these payments are done by cheque. While some were being done by RTGS, from now on, all payments will be cashless. The Mumbai police had begun cashless transactions and the traffic branch fine offenders in digital mode. Most of the commissionerates in the state like Thane, Pune, Nagpur, etc. also use e-payments in traffic offences.

Everything digital
IGP Singh said while most payments had slowly moved to cashless methods, some 10 per cent of transactions by the police force used old methods, but from now on all payments would be digital.

2.5 lakh
No. of personnel in the Maharashtra police

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