NEW DELHI: Four months after Delhi High Court judge Vipin Sanghi's call to the emergency helpline number 100 went unanswered, the Ministry of Home Affairs and Delhi Police today expressed "regret" over the matter.
A High Court bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal today asked the police regarding the action taken by them to prevent such situations when calls made 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 bench asked the police which expressed regret before the court. Responding to the query, the counsel representing police told the bench that heavy traffic on telecom service provider leads to congestion in their systems and they have sought a dedicated bandwidth for calls to the emergency number.The counsel also said that several aspects, including the response time of police and steps to tackle the law and order situation here, were pending before an another division bench of the High Court which is monitoring these issues after the sensational December 16, 2012 gangrape case.
The bench, after hearing the submissions, reserved its order in the matter for September 24. 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 had 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, had narrated his "poor personal experience" of calling up the helpline on April 29 this year when he was on his way to Vasant Kunj to attend a wedding reception.
The ministry and the police had earlier told the court that "inconvenience" caused to Justice Vipin Sanghi was inadvertent and due to reasons beyond their control, including congestion in the systems of telephone service providers.
Giving details of steps taken to handle the problem, the ministry had said that manpower resources deployed for managing the emergency response system has been further harmonised to keep in tune with the overall workload and changing call patterns.
Regretting the inconvenience caused to Justice Sanghi, the police had said that there was a heavy rush of calls at that time due to which the call made by the judge could not be attended to.