Perhaps for the first time in India, all police stations in a police commissionerate will be headed by women for a day. The newly created Avadi Police Commissionerate will observe International Women's Day on Tuesday by a novel, even if symbolic delegation of power, to women officers.
It was Avadi Commissioner of Police Sandeep Rai Rathore who hit upon this idea to recognise, honour, celebrate and cherish the role of women in uniform.
Mr. Rathore said: "Since it is international Women's Day, we are deputing women inspectors to handle 25 police stations as station house officers for a day. It was never done anywhere. They will be holding the post for 24 hours from midnight of Monday. We can say proudly how much we worked for gender parity in Tamil Nadu. We do our part to do a little bit. The idea is basically to commemorate the day and say women are in charge of most things. Maybe it's a thing of gender parity it looks like."
Inspector-General and Additional Commissioner of Police (Headquarters and Traffic) B. Vijayakumari will hold additional charge as Joint Commissioner of Police for a day on March 8. Similarly, G. Umayal, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Headquarters and Administration, will function as the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Avadi and Red Hills districts. The present Deputy Commissioner J. Mahesh has been assigned other duty.
The Commissioner of Police instructed the officers to ensure that no grievance putforth by women remained unattended.
Senior Advocate Geetha Ramashesan said, “It is an interesting move and should not be restricted to one day. However, ideally there has to be gender parity in police stations and in all wings of the department with equal number of men and women.”
