Securing women and children, controlling street crime, ensuring safety of senior citizens, changing public perception of the Delhi Police and big push in the form of digitisation are the key areas for operation for new Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Kumar Patnaik. 1985-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) of Arunachal, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre, Patnaik formally took over as Delhi Police Commissioner on Tuesday from his predecessor Alok Kumar Verma who has been appointed as Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) Director.
Patnaik will have one of the longest tenures as the head of the force. In his first interaction after taking over as top cop, Patnaik said that his area of focus will be to prevent street crime, bring semblance of law and order to secure senior citizens, women and children. “The Delhi Police will go for digitisation in a big way and will also bring transparency in police functioning. I have grown up with the Delhi Police for the last 30 years and I will use my experience to provide a safe city to the citizens,” he said.
“We will work on ensuring that the perception of the Delhi Police gets better in the eyes of the public. The Delhi Police is one of the best in the country. They are definitely the most hard-pressed in the country and they are doing a wonderful job. But still somehow, somewhere, the perception about police, I think needs to be made better and we will work on it,” he stressed.
The new Police Commissioner said his focus will be on making women feel safer in the national Capital.
Apart from women safety, Patnaik said they will try to “reach out to people from all sections of the society”. “Our public grievance redressal system is good and we are able to recah out to public and public can meet officcers at any level. But we will still see where exactly we can improve it further,” he said.
The police chief said digitisation and tackling cyber crimes will be key focus areas. “I won’t be able to spell it (digitisation plan) out at the moment but we have many schemes that have been digitised and we will see what other schemes can be digitised for the people,” he said.
He said the Cyber Cell of the Delhi Police is “already doing a great job” and steps have been taken to ensure that there are cyber units at district level. More people will be trained to tackle cyber crimes, he added. “We are in the process of training a lot of people on cyber crime and cyber offences, how to investigate them and that process will continue,” he said.
Earlier, Patnaik was accorded a ceremonial welcome at the police headquarters and then proceeded to take over the charge. Immediately after the official ceremony, the new Police Commissioner held a meeting with his senior and field officers to review the law and order situation in the national Capital. “His instructions were very clear as he wants to raise the confidence level of the citizens vis-à-vis Delhi Police” said an officer who was part of the first official meeting of Patnaik at the helm.