New Delhi, Nov 18 (PTI) Counter terrorism, cyber crime and Maoist violence are a host of issues that will be discussed at the annual DGPs conference beginning Friday in Lucknow.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the meeting on November 20 and 21, Union Home Minister Amit Shah will inaugurate it on Friday evening.

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The conference will discuss a wide range of issues, including cyber crime, data governance, counter terrorism challenges, left wing extremism, emerging trends in narcotics trafficking, prison reforms among others, an official statement said.

Since 2014, the prime minister has taken a keen interest in the DGP conference.

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Unlike the symbolic presence earlier, he makes it a point to attend all sessions of the conference and encourages free and informal discussions that provide an opportunity to top police officials to directly brief the prime minister on key policing and internal security issues affecting the country, it said.

About 250 officers in the rank of DGP and IGP from all states, union territories and central government will take part in the meet, organised by the Intelligence Bureau.

The conference will be held in hybrid format. The DGPs of states and other police organisations will attend the conference physically at the venue in Lucknow, while the remaining invitees will participate virtually from 37 different locations across the country, the statement said.

As per the vision of the prime minister, since 2014, the annual conferences, which used to be customarily organised in Delhi, have been held outside Delhi with an exception in the year 2020 when it was organised virtually.

The conference has been organised at Guwahati in 2014, Dhordo, Rann of Kutch in 2015, National Police Academy, Hyderabad in 2016, BSF Academy, Tekanpur (Madhya Pradesh) in 2017, Kevadiya (Gujarat) in 2018 and IISER, Pune in 2019.

There have been considerable changes in the format, venue, topics covered, deliverables in the DGPs and IGPs conference since 2014.

The number of business sessions and topics have increased significantly with a focus on improving policing in service of people.

Before 2014, deliberations largely focused on national security matters only.

Since 2014, these conferences have a twin focus of national security as well as core policing issues, including prevention and detection of crime, community policing, law and order, improving police-image etc, a Home Ministry official said.

Earlier, the conference was Delhi-centric, with officers coming together only for the conference. Residing in the same premises since 2014, over a period of 2-3 days, has served to build heightened sense of unity among officers of all cadres and organisations.

Direct interaction of top brass of police with the head of government has resulted in convergence of views on crucial challenges faced by the country and emergence of doable recommendations, the official said.

In the past few years, the topics are selected after detailed discussions with the highest echelons of the police service.

Once selected, several iterations of presentations are made before committees of DGs in order to encourage participation and to incorporate ideas from the field and from younger officers. As a result, all presentations are now broad-based, content-intensive and carry a set of cogent, actionable recommendations.

Since 2015, detailed follow-up of recommendations of past conferences is the norm and is the topic of the first business session, attended by the prime minister and the home minister.

Recommendations are tracked closely by the conference secretariat, led by the Intelligence Bureau, with the help of nodal officers of the states.

From 2017 onwards, guest speakers were invited to share their knowledge and experiences with delegates.

Decisions made in the past few conferences led to significant policy changes leading to improvement of policing in the country, including setting higher standards for effective policing in rural and urban areas, and improved methods of modern policing, based on SMART parameters.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)