BackHC pulls up Delhi police over poor response time on helpline number 100
High court asks Delhi police to give action plan to address the 'poor response time' of emergency calls made to the helpline number 100
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New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Monday pulled up the Delhi police and ministry of home affairs (MHA) over efforts being made by them to address the problem of ‘poor response time’ of emergency calls made to the helpline number 100.
“What action are you taking to handle traffic that is received over the helpline, we would like to know that. Also, what about calls that go unanswered?", asked chief justice of Delhi high court, G. Rohini.
In response, the court was informed by the Delhi police that heavy traffic received over the helpline number would often lead to congestion in their system for which they had sought dedicated bandwidth to be assigned for calls made to the emergency number. Apart from this, request for location based services to track the call which would in turn ensure quicker response by the police was made.
They further contended that in order to control the situation, manpower resources had been strengthened and the central police control room would ensure to return all abandoned calls that had been made to the helpline.
“The call traffic on the helpline has reduced drastically from 5,533 calls per day in March to 205 calls per day in June." Delhi police told the court.
The court was also informed of a similar matter which was pending before another bench in the Delhi high court.
The courts’ concern had come as it was hearing a matter of its own accord (suo motu) based on Justice Vipin Sanghi’s personal experience with the emergency helpline number.
On 29 April, Vipin Sanghi, a judge of the Delhi high court had called the helpline number to inform them of a traffic situation near Vasant Kunj but the call was not answered. Based on this, Sanghi wrote a letter to chief justice of Delhi high court, G. Rohini seeking the courts’ intervention on the issue of poor response time of the helpline number.
The court is likely to pass an order in this matter on 24 September.
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