Despite the State DGP MA Ganapathy assuring after assuming charge that he would review the performance of the City Patrol Unit and its focus would be shifted to controlling traffic and stopping accidents, nothing has happened so far.
The CPU personnel as usual have remained more engaged in slapping challans on the traffic rule violators rather than in checking traffic at the accident- prone areas. They are nowhere to be seen to ease out traffic congestion that is occurring daily in Dehradun.
With an objective to check crimes and to make the road users to conform to the traffic rules to curb accidents, City Patrol Unit was formed at the behest of the ex-DGP B S Sidhu in three districts-Dehradun, Haridwar and Nainital.
City Patrol Unit personnel faced flak for its focus on slapping penalties on the traffic rule violators from the local residents. People of the state might have welcomed the CPU unit had it confined itself to the task assigned to it at its inception, the common view runs.
The CPU personnel seem to be on a hunting spree to find and pounce upon those on the roads who are their easy prey.
Statistics reveal that there has been marginal increase in the number of road accidents in the state capital, in particular as well as other parts of the state.
Rash driving, drunk driving and overloading among others are the main reasons leading to road accidents.
Observers say that this unit might have checked road accidents had it been deployed on the highways or the accident prone areas of the state.
“Now, it is to be seen how the new DGP would new-make the unit, shifting its focus from the act of making the law violators shell out money as penalty to the task of enforcing traffic rules and checking accidents and crimes,” an observer said.
DGP had said recently that unlike the earlier time when the command over the unit rested with the Range level officers, the district police head would control things from now onwards. The district head cops would deploy CPU according to their discretion to enforce traffic laws and control accidents and crimes, he had declared.
Mention worthy, the unit came into being in Dehradun in April, 2014 at the behest of the former DGP BS Sidhu who had conceived it, inspired by the existing US model.
CPU was later expanded to Haridwar and Haldwani again at the initiative of Sidhu to enforce order on the bustling roads of the two important cities of the State.