Four papers to see before you sign a security contract

There is a particular kind of meeting we hear about a lot. An agency comes in, the rate is fifteen per cent below everyone else, the file has a laminated certificate in it, and the person opposite is likeable. Six months later a guard has walked off with something, or an inspector has asked a question, and it turns out the laminated certificate was a training certificate from a private institute and the licence was for a different state.

None of this requires you to become an expert. It requires four documents and about an afternoon.

1. The PSARA licence

This is the one that is not optional.

Ask for the licence and look at exactly three things.

• The number. A real licence has one. Note it down; you are going to quote it in your contract.
• The issuing state. A PSARA licence issued for Maharashtra does not authorise deployment in Madhya Pradesh. Agencies with a genuine national presence hold multiple state licences and can show you the one for your state. Agencies that do not will change the subject.
• The validity dates. Licences expire. An expired licence is the same as no licence, and "renewal is in process" is not a status you should accept for guards who are already on your gate.

Then quote the number in the contract, with a clause that the agency will inform you of any change in licence status. It costs you one sentence and it converts a verbal claim into a contractual representation.

Ours, for the record, is PSA/L/19/MP/2025/AUG/3/1356, issued by the Controlling Authority, Madhya Pradesh, valid until 13 August 2030. You should ask every agency to be that specific, including us.

2. One month of ESI and PF challans

This is the document that protects you, and it is the one agencies are most reluctant to produce.

If the guards on your premises are not properly enrolled and paid, the liability does not stay neatly with the agency. Under the contract-labour framework, the organisation whose premises the work happens on is the principal employer, and principal employers get asked to make good what the contractor did not.

So do not ask "are you compliant?" — everyone says yes. Ask for:

• one month's ESI challan and one month's PF challan, recent;
• the ECR (electronic challan-cum-return) listing, so you can see actual names and amounts, not just a total;
• confirmation of what wage rate is being used, against the current Madhya Pradesh minimum wages notification for the relevant skill category.

Now do the arithmetic that most buyers skip. Take the monthly rate you have been quoted per guard, subtract the statutory minimum wage, subtract ESI and PF contributions, subtract uniform and supervision. If what is left is implausibly thin, or negative, then one of two things is true: the agency is losing money on you, or the guard is not getting what the challan implies. Neither ends well, and the second one ends with your name on a notice.

A useful sanity check: an agency quoting well below the market is not more efficient. Guarding has almost no economies of scale — it is one person standing somewhere for eight hours. The only line items that compress are the ones that are supposed to be paid to, or for, the guard.

3. Police verification for the specific guards

"All our guards are verified" is a statement about a policy. You want a statement about the four people who will actually be on your premises.

Ask for, per guard:

• police verification or antecedent-check record;
• photo identity and address proof;
• the training record — PSARA contemplates trained guards, and an agency should be able to say what training a given guard has had and when;
• for armed guards, the position on the firearm licence.

Then ask the question that tells you whether the paperwork is real: what happens when this guard is replaced? Guarding has turnover. A serious agency has a process — the replacement is verified before posting and you are informed. A casual agency sends whoever is available, and the file you inspected in month one describes nobody who is currently on your gate.

Put that in the contract too: no unverified guard is posted, and substitutions are notified.

4. Insurance, and what it actually covers

Ask what cover the agency carries and read the scope, because the word "insured" is doing a lot of work in most brochures. The distinctions that matter:

• cover for injury to the agency's own personnel on your premises;
• public or third-party liability;
• anything covering loss of your property — usually much narrower than clients assume, and often absent altogether.

It is entirely reasonable for an agency to say "we do not indemnify you against theft". Most do not, and a guarding contract is not an insurance policy. What is not reasonable is vagueness. You want to know exactly where the risk sits so you can decide whether to insure it yourself.

The fifth question, which is not a document

Ask: who is the local supervisor, and where does he live?

Every real problem in guarding happens at an inconvenient hour. A guard does not turn up for the night shift. A guard is found asleep. There is an argument at the gate with a contractor's truck driver. In each case the only thing that resolves it is a supervisor who can physically be there, and who has a reliever to send.

An agency operating your site from two hundred kilometres away will answer the phone. It will not solve the problem before your shift is over. Ask for the supervisor's name, his base, how often he does rounds, and — the real test — ask about the reliever pool. An agency without relievers will quietly run your guard on a double shift, which is illegal, and which is also why he is asleep at four in the morning.

A short checklist you can take into the meeting

If an agency clears all five, you can negotiate on price honestly, because you are comparing like with like. If it cannot clear the first two, the price is irrelevant.

We would rather be checked than trusted

Central India Security & Services has operated in Madhya Pradesh since 1994. We hold PSARA Licence No. PSA/L/19/MP/2025/AUG/3/1356 for the whole state, MHA approval, and ISO 45001:2018 and ISO 9001:2015 certification. The scanned licence and both certificates, with their numbers, are published on this site — you can read them before you speak to us.

Send the questions above to any agency you are considering, including us. If you would like our answers with the documents attached, message us on WhatsApp or call +91 99267 73460.