After being criticised by the Opposition for the state’s law and order situation and women’s safety issues, Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav’s new policing scheme is appearing to have begun to change the scenario.
As per an Economic Times report, Yadav’s scheme, called ‘UP 100’, has 3,200 Innovas and Boleros with a total of 22275 policemen to reach out to complaints by people to its control room. The police team reaches in 20 minutes to the spot in rural areas and 15 minutes in cities. “In 82% of cases in last 50 days, our vehicles reached the spot within this time-limit,” said UP Police Additional Director General Anil Agarwal.
While the highest number of calls (around 60,000 of them), in its first 50 days of operation, were about complaints about disputes, the second highest (23127) were about domestic violence. Agarwal has said that 51% of the domestic violence complaints were women victims, 26% were senior citizens. “Maximum cases were of man beating wife, the family beating the wife and senior citizens getting beaten,” he said.
The 5,600 calls were made by women regarding complaints against sexual harassment. Half of them were about assaults, abuse. There were also dozen calls about acid attacks. The team also says it saved 59 people from committing suicide.
The control room is run by a team of 700 women outsourced from Tech Mahindra operating from outskirts of Lucknow. They attend the distress calls on 600 telephone lines. Maximum calls have come from Lucknow, Allahabad, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Varanasi, Agra and Gorakhpur, in that order.
The Election Commission has ordered that the UP 100 team won’t be diverted for election duties. The calls to the control room are recorded and documented and covered under RTI.
Source: dnaindia.com