The High Court of Karnataka on Monday sought State Government’s response on a PIL petition, which is seeking direct human interface with the citizens who call emergency response numbers 112 or 100 instead of the existing time consuming mechanism of filtering calls through Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS).
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi and Justice S.R. Krishna Kumar passed the order on the petition filed by Arunkumar N.T. a resident of Nagadevanahalli in Bengaluru.
The petitioner, who personally argued his case, pointed out that response system to the callers to 112 or 100 should be like that of the response system in 108 (ambulance service) and 101 (fire service), where the operators takes the call on the second ring without making the caller to go through the process of IVRS to chose options before reaching the operator for conversation.
The IVRS system in 112 or 100 is taking a time of nearly one minute for the caller to chose the desired options like police assistance/traffic assistance/cyber crime assistance/enquiry, and this results in loss of precious time of the caller in emergency situation or distress, the petitioner pointed out.
Narrating how the calls made to 112 or 100 gets filtered through IVRS based on his own experience of dialing 112 or 100 for an assistance, the petitioner said that the very purpose of providing these numbers for emergency response gets defeated as the callers are not be able to speak to police instantly.
The petitioner also said that the 112 or 100 response system should have facility to receive the calls within second right besides having the facility to call back the callers in case of disconnection during call or in case of missed calls. Penal provision can be introduced to prevent pranksters, the petitioner has said in the petition.
