However, the figure of Bihar is likely to go up in 2011 as after the murder of Purnea BJP MLA, Raj Kishore Kesari, on Jan 4, 2011 the number of cops deployed to provide protection to ministers, MLAs/MLCs have increased manifold.

According to a report released by Home Minister P Chidambaram, manpower for protected persons' protection duty is drawn from available resources generally without corresponding increase in sanctioned strength for the purpose. This has strained the already limited manpower resources of state police.

Therefore, there is a need for periodic review of the deployment of police for protected persons' protection against need based assessment coupled with proportionate increase in the sanctioned and professionally trained manpower commensurate to the bona fide protected persons' protection requirements.

Thus VIP security and not law and order seems to be the top-most priority for most state governments as nearly double the alloted number of policemen have been deployed to guard 16,788 prominent people across the country.

The Home Ministry report said that these 16,788 VIPs, which include mostly ministers, MPs, MLAs, judges and bureaucrats, were guarded by 50,059 policemen in 25 states and Union Territories in 2010 for six months or more. Interestingly, only 28,298 police personnel were actually sanctioned to be deployed for protection to these VIPs in that year. The story was worse in 2009 when more than double than the actual allotted strength of policemen were deployed to provide security to 17,451 VIPs across the country. The allotted strength of policemen for VIP security in that year was 23,637 but actually 47,355 police personnel were deployed to protect these prominent people.

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