New Delhi, Aug 26 (IANS): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday said the annual conference of police chiefs must "reinvent" itself, setting some "quantifiable goals every year" and reviewing achievements the following year.

"This conference has been a time-tested mechanism for enhanced coordination but given the changing circumstances, the time perhaps has come for it to reinvent itself," the prime minister said at the meeting of the chiefs of state police and central security agencies.

"Perhaps this year onwards you could set for yourself some quantifiable goals to be achieved in the coming year. The actual achievement against these goals could be reviewed in the subsequent conference," Manmohan Singh told the meeting, the 45th since independence.

It is organised annually by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), India's internal intelligence agency, with its chief chairing the meet as its ex-officio chairperson.

IB Director Rajiv Mathur told IANS that the conference was first organised in 1920 and has since been held regularly in New Delhi.

In the post-Independence period, the first conference was organised in 1950 and was inaugurated by first union home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, he said. "It was earlier a biannual meeting, but since 1972 became an annual event."

"The meet is held with an objective to provide an interactive platform for senior police professional and security administrators in the country to freely discuss and debate diverse national security-related issues and devise ways to tackle them," he said.