New Delhi, July 18 (IANS) The Delhi Police on Monday expressed regret before the Delhi High Court over the "inconvenience" caused to Justice Vipin Sanghi, whose calls to the emergency helpline number 100 went unanswered, saying it was "inadvertent" and a result of congestion and they have taken several steps to streamline the system in this regard.
"The inconvenience caused to Justice Vipin Sanghi was inadvertent and due to reasons beyond control and it is assured that all sincere steps are being taken to ensure that such incidents do not recur in future," said the Delhi Police affidavit submitted before a bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal.
Police said to tackle the problem of calls queuing up at the telecom service provider, "the matter regarding priority routing of emergency calls has been taken up with authorities concerned".
The present police assistance 100 system, the central police control room (CPCR) of Delhi police, was installed in 2008 and it attends to about 24,000 calls per day
"Heavy traffic on TSP (telecom service provider) leads to congestion in their system as a result of which few calls do not reach Delhi Police exchange in CPCR and get abandoned," the Delhi Police said.
This creates the impression to the distress caller as if the call has not been attended by the police assistance call taker, whereas actually the call has not landed at CPCR, they clarified.
Secondly, during peak hours, as the number of call increases sharply, calls are put on hold and they remain in queue till they are taken up by call taker or disconnected by the caller themselves.
Keeping in view the system is old, the Home Ministry said preventive maintenance cycle of the technical infrastructure has been made more stringent and frequent. It also said feedback staff has been deputed round the clock in CPCR to make calls to telephone number from which calls made to CPCR are found to be abandoned.
It also said that priority proposal for creating 663 additional posts for functioning of various control rooms in Delhi Police has already been taken up.
The bench has now fixed the matter for hearing on August 29.
Justice Sanghi in a letter to Chief Justice Rohini had narrated his "poor personal experience" of calling up the helpline on April 29 when he was on way to Vasant Kunj area of south Delhi to attend a wedding reception and was stuck in a traffic jam for about 40 minutes.
