BENGALURU: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday announced that 51 more pink Hoysalas will be added to the Bengaluru city police team. Speaking after the review meeting with senior police officers at the police headquarters, Siddaramaiah said the priority of the state government was to ensure safety of women and children.“Currently, 51 pink Hoysalas are patrolling the city. Soon, each police station will have an exclusive women patrolling staff,” he said.Currently there are 272 Hoysala patrolling vehicles, including the pink Hoysalas.The number will cross 300 once the new pink Hoysalas are added.
According to police, pink Hoysalas will be used to respond to the woes of women and children while other Hoysalas will be used for patrolling. Initially, the plan was to deploy one woman police officer in each vehicle but it could not be implemented because of shortage of staff.
Police sources said that they wanted to have at least 20-25 per cent women personnel in the force but the number is less than 10 per cent.
Presently, for 51 vehicles, if police deploy one woman per vehicle, 153 women personnel have to be deployed to work round-the-clock. The number will double once the new pink Hoysalas are introduced.
DCP (Command Centre) Nagendra Kumar said, “Presently, all the pink Hoysalas have at least one woman police personnel and we take assistance from a nearby station whenever necessary.”
Police sources, however, have a different version.
“Women police personnel are not keen on taking up patrolling duty at night due to various reasons. Some of them are visiting commissioner’s office and are requesting to put them on station work,” a source said.
Nagendra Kumar denied it and said women police personnel were ready to take up patrolling duty.
What’s the scenario?
There are around 600 women police personnel in Bengaluru who work in various police stations, administrative offices, including the issioner’s Office.
In Karnataka, ranked 14th in the country in terms of percentage of female police personnel, women constitute for just 6.14 per cent of the total force strength in the state.
In terms of all-women police stations, the state ranks 9th with just 20, a minuscule number when drawn up against Tamil Nadu’s 200 police stations dedicated for women.