India’s Private Security Industry reforming to Global Standards: Vivek Bharadwaj, IAS, Additional Secretary (PM)

In his address on Thursday at the 15th security leadership summit by CAPSI, Vivek Bharadwaj, IAS, Additional Secretary (PM), joined in and shared his overview about the growth of the industry and way forward. Being the 15th Annual Security Leadership Summit, the platform unfolds the path that the industry has travelled in the last 15 years. He added, “Coming from the ministry of coal and mining my initial years in this department was an entirely new ball-game. Though it took me some time to understand the Private Security industry but I was guided by CAPSI in many ways.”

He further said, “In the beginning of this unusual year 2020, I was able to announce private security industry as a part of the essential services, which is one of the prime reasons why the industry survived during the bad times of pandemic beside playing a pivotal role in securing establishments like malls, hospitals and other establishments which are a part of the industry.”

Bharadwaj further added on to say, “Presently, we are passing through the stage of inoculation of our workers in the industry and we at Ministry of Home Affairs has decided to approach the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to declare our workers as frontline warriors in the odd hours of Covid. Our mandate at MHA is to push the envelope as much as possible without going to the parliament. “

Therefore, one may notice some grey areas but the government have been pushing for ease of doing business as much as possible in this sector. He added, “We had consultations with about 35 organizations, thus inviting comments from them, which were open in public domain for about 15 days. Post that the government met these organization representative face to face and discussed about the feasibility of their suggestions which were then finally considered to lay down the guidelines. Earlier last year the Hon’ble Home Minister launched a portal wherein all these suggestions wherever necessary is taken in to the set of guidelines.”

It has been fourteen years since the last rules were notified and MHA has made a number of amendments in these guidelines to set up new policies. For example, in the 2006 rules there were manual verifications of antecedents, which is replaced by digital verification from database, thus ensuring instant verification from database by the controlling authority without any paper to travel from place to place. On the other hand the time frame for completion of verification of antecedents was 90 days in the previous rule, which is now reduced to 15 days ensuring faster procedure completion for government works. “Another important change that has been brought to place is that earlier only police was authorized to verify the antecedents, now the controlling authority is authorized to check the antecedents resulting in reduction of burden on the police”, shared the additional secretary in his address to the industry. 

Similarly there are host of other guidelines which are been set by the guidelines through amendment of policies, which would in turn be beneficial for common people. He further added on to conclude that with the new collaboration that CAPSI had entered with global partners will enable Indian private security industry to upscale to global standards and will soon enable us to cater to the entire world.