SILCHAR: A second round of Body Mass Index (BMI) tests for 1,884 state police personnel who were classified as obese in August last year started on Tuesday, Assam’s director general of police (DGP) Gyanendra Pratap Singh said.

“The review BMI testing for the 1884 police personnel has started at Jorhat, Silchar and Guwahati,” said GP Singh in a post on X, formerly Twitter. On Monday, Singh said the re-examination of the personnel who fell in the obese category would start at Guwahati, Silchar and Jorhat on Tuesday.

BMI, a simple weight-to-height calculation, is widely used to determine if a person’s weight falls within the healthy range. The World Health Organisation classifies a BMI score in the range of 18.5–24.9 as normal.

In May last year, Singh decided to conduct a fitness survey of the entire 70,000-strong force by evaluating their BMI and gave police personnel time till August to get in shape.

At the time, the government said all those who had a BMI of more than 30 would be given another three months to reduce their weight. Those who do not meet this fitness standard will be asked to quit the force under a voluntary retirement scheme except those who have a health condition such as thyroid disease.

After the first round of BMI tests beginning August 16, GP Singh said on X that 97.53% of the total force cleared the test.

Singh told HT in September that all police personnel with 30+ BMI would get free medical support before the second round of tests in January. “They’ll go through free liver function tests, kidney function tests, whole blood profiles etc. If medical interventions are required, we’ll provide that too,” he said.

Ahead of Tuesday’s review, Singh expressed the hope that the police personnel had shaped up. “We remain committed to provide the people of Assam a professional and fit Police Unit,” he said, underlining that the aim was to create a healthy police force and not punish anyone.

“This BMI test will be a yearly feature in our department till I am the DGP and I hope my successors will continue this,” Singh said.