Terming the ‘inconvenience’ to Justice Vipin Sanghi, whose calls to the emergency helpline number 100 went unanswered, as “inadverent”, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Delhi Police on Monday told the High Court that the problem was due to reasons beyond their control, including congestion in the systems of telephone service providers.
The MHA and police conveyed to a Bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal that they have taken several steps to streamline the system of emergency helpline system 100 and make it more efficient. “The Delhi Police has further submitted that the inconvenience caused to Justice Vipin Sanghi (a judge of Delhi High Court) was inadvertent and due to reasons beyond their control and it is assured that all sincere steps are being taken to ensure that such incidents do not recur in future,” MHA said.
In its affidavit filed through the Centre’s Standing Counsel Anil Soni, the Ministry said to tackle the problem of calls queuing up at the telecom service provider and MTNl, “the matter regarding priority routing of emergency calls has been taken up with authorities concerned. Ministry of Communication and IT, Dept of Telecommunication has taken up the matter with all access service providers”.
Giving the details of steps taken to handle the problem, the Ministry said the manpower resources deployed for managing emergency response system has been further harmonised.