Fittness compition
Police personnel from various districts in West Zone at a parade competition at the Armed Reserve Grounds on Saturday.In an effort to ensure correct turnout and smartness among serving police personnel and keep them fit from the day of recruitment till day of retirement, West Zone Police on Saturday conducted an inter-zone parade contest for police personnel from the entire zone.The contest was for two contingents from each district representing the Armed Reserve and another team comprising police personnel from the local stations.Each contingent had 36 personnel each with one officer as the parade commander. The DIG of Police, Salem Range, N. Chenbagharaman, Superintendents of Police, G. Karthikeyan (Coimbatore Rural District), Sonal V. Misra (Erode), Vidya D. Kulkarni (The Nilgiris), P.C. Thenmozhi (Krishnagiri), Najmal Hoda (Dharmapuri), N. Baskaran (Salem Rural District), Y. John Nicholson (Namakkal) and others took part.The Inspector-General of Police, West Zone, K. Rajendran said that from the day of recruitment till retirement, the uniformed service personnel were expected to remain fit and also to ensure discipline and good turn out in uniform, displaying smartness.
There was a pertinent need to ensure discipline and uniformity when the police personnel salute their superiors which was a basic pre-requisite in police service.Over the years, there had been reports/complaints of the salute smartness of police personnel deteriorating.Hence, the decision to ensure proper salute by the personnel which is the benchmark to ensure discipline. A thrust or impetus on these things would ensure physical fitness, health among the personnel and wipe out pot bellies among the police personnel.Over the last one month, the 10,000 odd police personnel were put through rigorous training in parade exercises and of them 800 personnel were chosen based on parade perfection.
Now, these police personnel would be asked to visit police stations to ensure parade drill perfection, turn out, smartness, physical fitness and saluting methods among the remaining police personnel.The road map would be to turn the entire force in the West Zone perfect by the turn of January 2008. In the next phase, parade smartness and fitness would be ensured among the women police personnel.All the participating police personnel in appreciation and recognition for the month-long efforts were given cash reward of Rs. 250 each.Three retired police officials, G.N. Vellingiri (former SP), K. Gopal (retired ADSP) and K.P. Kuppusamy (former DSP) were the judges.
At the end of the three hour long competition, under the category for the Armed Reserve, the Nilgiris, Namakkal and Salem City walked away with the first three prizes respectively each carrying a trophy besides cash awards of Rs. 5,000, Rs. 3,000 and Rs. 2,000 respectively.In the local police category, Nilgiris, Erode and Namakkal bagged the first three prizes respectively with the same prize money and trophy as it was given to the Armed Reserve contingents.The participating personnel of the winning teams were individually given Rs. 500, Rs. 400 and Rs. 300 each for the first three positions within every winning contingent.
