MHA, Delhi Police regret 'inconvenince' caused to HC judge

Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Delhi Police today told Delhi High Court that "inconvenience" caused to Justice Vipin Sanghi, whose calls to the emergency helpline number 100 went unanswered, was "inadvertent" and due to reasons beyond their control, including congestion in the systems of telephone service providers.
MHA and the police conveyed to a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal that they have taken several steps to streamline the system of emergency helpline system '100' and make it more efficient.
"Delhi Police has further submitted that the inconvenience caused to Justice Vipin Sanghi (a judge of Delhi High Court) was inadvertent and due to reasons beyond their control and it is assured that all sincere steps are being taken to ensure that such incidents do not recur in future," MHA said.

In its affidavit filed through the central government's standing counsel Anil Soni, the ministry said that to tackle the problem of calls queuing up at the telecom service provider and MTNL, "the matter regarding priority routing of emergency calls has been taken up with authorities concerned. Ministry of Communication and IT, Department of Telecommunication has taken up the matter with all access service providers".
Giving the details of steps taken to handle the problem, the ministry said the manpower resources deployed for managing emergency response system has been further harmonised to keep in tune with the overall workload and changing call pattern.

Delhi Police also filed its affidavit in which it said that heavy traffic on telecom service provider (TSP) leads to congestion in their systems as a result of which few calls do not reach Central Police Control Room (CPCR) exchange and get abandoned at the end of TSP.

"This creates the impression to the distres caller as if the call has not been attended by PA-100 calltaker whereas actually the call has not landed at CPCR," it said.
Regretting the inconvenience caused to Justice Sanghi, who had called the emergency helpline number when he was stuck in a traffic jam here on April 29 this year, the police said at that time there was a heavy rush of calls due to which the call made by the judge could not be attended.

The ministry said that to make the system more efficient,
preventive maintenance cycle of the techincal infrastructure has been made more stringent.
It said that feedback staff has been deputed in CPCR to make calls to telephone numbers from which calls made to CPCR are found to be abandoned.
"During the intervening period (May 15 to June 30), 24019 calls were adandoned and all the callers were contacted by CPCR feedback centre," it said, adding, "Due to above steps, the queue time and numbers of abandoned calls have reduced appreciably from March to June 2016."
It said that extension of PA-100 system upto PCR van is being taken up during the current financial year.

The police told the court that PA-100 system in CPCR was installed in 2008 and it was attending approximately 24000 calls per day.
It said that Ministry of Communication and IT has already initiated action on the issue about the congestion in telecom network and priority proposal for creation of 663 additional posts for functioning of various control rooms in Delhi Police has been taken up.
Giving reasons for the traffic congestion in which Justice Sanghi was stuck near Vasant Kunj, the police said it was because of a marriage reception at a farm house there in which guests had parked their vehicles on the road.

During the earlier hearing, the high court had expressed concern over the "poor" response on the police emergency helpline number '100'.
The court on its own had converted Justice Sanghi's letter, which was sent to the Police Commissioner as well as the Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, into a public interest litigation and sought the response of the Centre and Delhi Police regarding what Justice Sanghi had experienced.
Justice Sanghi, in his letter addressed to Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Kumar Verma, has narrated his "poor personal experience" of calling up the helpline on April 29 when he was on his way to Vasant Kunj to attend a wedding reception.