The Delhi Police on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that many distress calls made to its emergency number 100 do not reach its call centre due to the circuitous route provided by the telecom operators and that there was a need for a dedicated bandwidth for such calls.
A bench headed by Justice B.D. Ahmed issued notice to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology seeking its response on the issue of whether a dedicated bandwidth can be provided for calls made on 100.
“We are told that 100 number for reaching police is not a dedicated line nor does it have priority. This is a serious matter. We are told it is due to insufficient and dedicated bandwidth given to the number by MTNL and other telecom service providers,” the bench said.
Telecom providers
Advocate Meera Bhatia, an amicus in the matter, expressed concern that the request of the Delhi Police for a different bandwidth and real-time tracking — as in many cases a distress caller does not know her or his location — is pending before the telecom service provider.
The Delhi Police also told the court that most of the unanswered calls happen during peak hours.
Similar issue of distress calls not being answered as they do not reach the police in the first place came up some time ago during the hearing of a case initiated on the complaint of a High Court judge whose call on 100 number was not answered when he was stuck in traffic.
