11,600 new GPS-enabled vehicles to boost policing

The Delhi police is all set to send a proposal next week to the Union home ministry for the purchase of 11,600 new GPS enabled vehicles in order to improve policing in the national capital. The proposal has been prepared by the police after doing a thorough audit of its resources which suggested that many police stations have no vehicles for patrolling and taking criminals to courts.

A senior officer said that once the proposal gets a nod from the home ministry, the police force will be able to improve policing all across the city. At present, the 78,000 personnel strong force responsible for law and order in the national capital has only 5,000 vehicles at its disposal. Of the 5,000-odd vehicles, about 2,000 are four-wheelers, which include 800 Police Control Room vans and 400 other vehicles for officers. Many a time, the police does not have any vehicle to ferry criminals to courtrooms and dead bodies to hospitals.

The city police has to maintain law and order across 1,483 square kilometers, monitor 85 lakh registered vehicles in the city that travel 33,198 kilometers and cater to about 1.92 crore population. The force also has to attend thousands of court cases every day. During his annual press conference early this year, the then Commissioner of Police B.S. Bassi after attending a conference in the United States had said, “I interacted with US counterparts and inquired how many vehicles do they have in total. They were clueless. They replied that each of their police station has more than 100 vehicles. I was surprised when we could create such kind of infrastructure for better policing.”