Police booths in city fail to live up to the hype

The Delhi Police’s all women pink booths and integrated facilitation centres, launched over the last two years for enhanced safety of women in public spaces and to provide doorstep services to citizens in the national capital are battling several issues such as irregular working hours and poor deployment of staff, a spot check by Hindustan Times of several such booths across the city has shown.

- Karn Pratap Singh

Nearly a month and half ago, Delhi police commissioner Sanjay Arora, in a circular to his force, suggested separate deployment plans for pink and integrated facilitation booths and directed that timings for opening and closing of the booths should be mentioned on a display board in bold letters, outside the pickets. However, the display boards were missing at most of the at least 10 booths that HT visited on Friday. While a few of them were found locked or vacant, most of the booths that HT visited in east, south, and north-west Delhi did not have any display.

Missing display boards

HT found that boards mentioning the daily opening and closing hours of the booth were missing at the two booths in southwest Delhi’s South Campus. The timings had instead been put up on an A4 sheet of paper pasted outside the booths.

An integrated police facilitation booth at Acharya Niketan market, a busy market in Mayur Vihar Phase-1 in east Delhi, was open but vacant. A pink booth near Sanjay Van was found locked with untidy walls, and without the display board. The filth accumulated outside the booth, and the barricade place there showed that the police post may not have opened for the past few days. Moreover, no police personnel were found present around the booth.

The integrated police facilitation booth near gate number-14 of Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium, near the CGO Complex in south Delhi’s Lodhi Colony, was found open with at least five police personnel, including a woman constable, present inside the facility. However, HT could not find a display board showing the working hours of the booth. The police personnel deployed there said the booth functioned “24x7”.