MHA, Police regret unanswered ‘100’ call by HC judge

New Delhi, Aug 29 (PTI) Four months after Delhi HighCourt judge Vipin Sanghi’s call to the emergency helplinenumber 100 went unanswered, the Ministry of Home Affairs andDelhi Police today expressed "regret" over the matter. A High Court bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and JusticeSangita Dhingra Sehgal today asked the police regarding theaction taken by them to prevent such situations when callsmade to the emergency number go unanswered. "What action you are taking, we would like to know that.How do you propose to get over this problem," the benchasked the police which expressed regret before the court. Responding to the query, the counsel representing policetold the bench that heavy traffic on telecom service providerleads to congestion in their systems and they have sought adedicated bandwidth for calls to the emergency number. The counsel also said that several aspects, including theresponse time of police and steps to tackle the law and ordersituation here, were pending before an another division benchof the High Court which is monitoring these issues after thesensational December 16, 2012 gangrape case. The bench, after hearing the submissions, reserved itsorder in the matter for September 24. The court on its own had converted Justice Sanghi’sletter, which was sent to the Police Commissioner as well asthe Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, into a public interestlitigation and had sought the response of the Centre and DelhiPolice regarding what Justice Sanghi had experienced. Justice Sanghi, in his letter addressed to Delhi PoliceCommissioner Alok Kumar Verma, had narrated his "poor personalexperience" of calling up the helpline on April 29 this yearwhen he was on his way to Vasant Kunj to attend a weddingreception. The ministry and the police had earlier told the courtthat "inconvenience" caused to Justice Vipin Sanghi wasinadvertent and due to reasons beyond their control, includingcongestion in the systems of telephone service providers. Giving details of steps taken to handle the problem, theministry had said that manpower resources deployed formanaging the emergency response system has been furtherharmonised to keep in tune with the overall workload andchanging call patterns. Regretting the inconvenience caused to Justice Sanghi,the police had said that there was a heavy rush of calls atthat time due to which the call made by the judge could not beattended to. PTI ABA PPS HMPARC