The Andhra Pradesh cabinet on Monday evening approved the proposal to strengthen the state police force with the recruitment of an additional 35,831 personnel over a five-year period.

The cabinet also gave its nod for creation of an anti-terrorist force-called OCTOPUS (Organization To Counter Terrorist Operations) for effectively tackling the terrorist activities in the state.

Briefing media persons after the cabinet meeting, Minister for Information and Public Relations Anam Ramnarayan Reddy said the fresh recruitment to augment the strength of the police force would be taken up in a phased manner.

The decision was taken to strengthen the police department to effectively maintain law and order. There was a need to strengthen the department in view of increase in Maoist and terrorist activities in the State. Besides, there was a need for increase in policing due to population growth, he added.

The minister said that the decision to augment the police strength by 35,831 personnel would place an additional burden of Rs 882.88 crore on the state budget. He also announced that the government would also replace all the bullet-proof Ambassador cars with bullet-proof Scorpios for the use of VIPs. The overall strength of the state police would increase to 140,000 in a five-year period.

It has been decided to increase the strength in all the wings of the State police such as AP Special Police, state Intelligence, including Security Wing, Civil Police, Armed Reserve Police, Railway Police, CID, AP Police Academy and to create 1,600 new posts in various categories for the newly-formed OCTOPUS -- the anti-terrorist squad to deal exclusively with the terrorist activities in the state.

The personnel for OCTOPUS would be drawn from different wings of the police.