The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government’s key poll promise of providing marshals in Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses has hit a roadblock. Apart from lack of funds, the government is faced with acute shortage of personnel to take up the job for which it has written a letter to Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung requesting for withdrawal of 4,500 Home Guards who are currently deputed with the Delhi Police. As per its plans, the government had decided to deploy Home Guards as marshals in DTC buses. But it was faced by twin-issues – firstly, the total strength of Home Guards is dismally low and secondly, almost all of the existing staff is deployed with the Delhi Police. The Home Minister Satyendra Jain has written a letter to the L-G seeking withdrawal of its Home Guard force from the Delhi police and there has been no response from Mr Jung on the issue so far leading to delays.
The Home Guard, as of now, has a strength of just 4,500, whereas, it has as much as 5,000 vacancies. While 4,000 personnel are assisting the Delhi Police, the remaining 500 are deployed in various other departments. Due to this, the AAP’s other key promise of creating a Women’s Security Force comprising 10,000 Home Guards is likely to fall flat, until it issues green signal to the Delhi Home Guard to fill the vacancies.
As an alternative, the Home department is planning to deploy people from its civil defence force. “Because of the delay, now only civil defence volunteers will be trained as marshals for the time being. They will be paid at least Rs.450 on a daily basis for an 8-hour duty. The training will be done by Home Guard for a period of two weeks for each batch. Out of 18,000 civil defence volunteers, we have so far identified around 3,000 permanent ones,” said a Delhi government official.
But the government and its subsidiary organisations are also reeling under shortage of funds. In order to execute Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s promise of having marshals in buses, the DTC has already submitted a proposal to the Finance department for getting Rs.280 crore sanctioned for the purpose.
At the same time, 98 odd Home Guards who are already on the job making for marshals in DTC buses are dissatisfied with the work. “Home guards deputed with the transport corporation have not been getting salaries since the past seven months. In such a case, it is difficult to assess how they would manage to pay 2,500-5,000 marshals. A salary of one Home Guard is Rs.12,000,” said an official. These Home Guards were deployed after the gory December 16 gang-rape incident in 2012.
It is pertinent to note that salaries to Home Guard or Civil Defence Force are given by its respective user department. So if marshals are to be deputed in buses then the DTC will have to disburse their salaries.
