The congestion in non-maturing of calls was recently flagged by the Delhi Police at a high-level meeting, chaired by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, prompting the authorities concerned to press the panic button and ask the Telecom Ministry to find a solution to the problem, official sources said.
The Delhi Police, which receive 22,000 calls a day on an average at its control room, informed the Home Ministry that many calls via telephone number 100 did not get through due to congestion in the network, they said.
However, they did not give the number of calls getting dropped or not completed due to congestion, but drew the attention of the authorities, saying that the matter was grave and an early solution was required.
Police personnel answering these calls have also acknowledged the problem on the basis of feedback received from aggrieved callers.Necessary steps are being taken to resolve it with the help of the Telecom Ministry, said a senior official, requesting anonymity.
The Department of Telecommunications has written to all government and private service providers to give details of traffic for police helpline number 100 and the number of telephone lines being provided at present. They have also been asked to clarify whether traffic to the emergency number is delivered directly or routed through the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL).
If the traffic is routed through MTNL, the sources said, it has been directed to ascertain who is responsible for ensuring delivery of calls.The access service providers have been asked to give the number of telephone lines being provided and the number of telephone lines required to handle the rise in the volume of such calls. They have also been asked to give details of “gap, if any, and in how much time it will be filled”, the sources said.
The Telecom Ministry, which is already grappling with the problem of call drops and network congestion, has also asked the service providers to augment the traffic and the telephone lines to the emergency police telephone number, they said.
Altogether 82,92,203 such calls were received on phone number 100 in 2015, as per Delhi Police’s record.