With over Rs 6 lakh of mobile phone bills yet to be paid by the police authorities in the city and Salt Lake, senior officers are left with no option but to foot the bills of their official cell phones.

?I don?t have a choice. My mobile phone number was changed thrice and I lost all my contacts. To remain easily accessible to my contacts, I am maintaining a mobile phone,? said a senior officer of Bidhannagar (South) police station.

After dacoities and a rape rocked Salt Lake on Saturday night, the police brass had met to identify security loopholes. It was pointed out during the meeting that police officers working at the ground level are not provided with basic communication devices, like mobile phones.

Another senior officer said ?local arrangements? with mobile service providers are helping cops on the move to stay in touch. No officer was, however, willing to elaborate on the nature of the ?local arrangements?.

?Most police officers use mobile phones for official purposes and pay from their own pocket. Even senior officers are not given mobile phones. The instruments they are using are their own,? said the senior Salt Lake police officer.

Over the past three years, the mobile phone numbers of cops above the rank of sub-divisional police officers and below superintendent of police have been changed thrice.

Praveen Kumar, police superintendent of North 24-Parganas, said the department is trying to arrange funds to allow senior officers to retain a mobile number for a sustained period. ?At present, only my phone bill is paid by the department. We are trying to increase allotment for mobile phones,? he added.

The mobile phone bills of senior officers were last borne by the department in 2001. By the following year, the outstanding annual bills of 26 mobile telephones belonging to senior officers had touched Rs 4 lakh.

?We had paid some part of the amount in instalments. The rest was cleared in February this year. A letter was sent to Hutch, the service provider, asking it to discontinue services,? said an officer of the police department. Hutch had disconnected the numbers in 2003.

From the end of that year, the cops had switched to BSNL with a ?local arrangement? with prepaid card sellers. ?The senior officers obtained phone numbers in groups from local vendors. The arrangement continued till April 2005. The police department did not spend a single paisa for this connection,? the officer explained.

From May, the officers have gone in for another ?local arrangement? with Hutch. This time, though, Rs 300 per month has been sanctioned for each connection.