‘PCR will work as independent wing’: Delhi Police chief
New Delhi: In an important move, inverting the erstwhile Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana’s decision to integrate Police Control Room (PCR) with all the 15 district police, incumbent city police chief Sanjay Arora on Monday officially suspended the merger, issuing an order.
The merger took place on September 1, 2021. Before Asthana’s order, PCR was a separate section under the operation department of the Delhi Police. The PCR unit currently has a strength of 5,219 personnel with 750 PCR vans. The recent official order mentioned that the experiment was aimed at better emergency call management by increasing the resources of police stations as well as ensuring the availability of dedicated police personnel for law enforcement and investigation. However, it resulted in lowering the working operation by the reduction in workload per investigating officer, increased disposal of inquest, increased rate of challenging cases, etc.
Police sources informed Millennium Post that the decision comes after the recent spine-chilling criminal incidents in the national capital, including the killing of a 20-year-old girl in a road accident case in Delhi’s Sultanpuri area, where she was dragged for almost 12 km.
The Police Commissioner also underlined that even though the human resources that the districts received after the merger did register some benefits within a year of the merger, the manpower of the police stations reached back to their pre-merger level because the priorities kept changing and units like Crime Branch, Security, Special Cell were reconstituted without increasing the manpower of the Delhi Police and old, experienced staff working in the police stations were deputed to strengthen them.
“A comprehensive analysis of these situations was done and it was found based on statistics that the initial gains that were achieved had nothing to do with the dissolution of PCR, they were achieved only by the increase of human resources in the police stations,” the recent order mentioned. It further added: “A significant erosion of the Delhi Police’s image during this time cycle was the PCR’s image of a centralized, holistic and committed response.”
The top cop also mentioned that a decline related to this also happened that the independent, fair and unbiased information received by the pre-merger PCR. Personal preferences and preferences of beats, police stations and districts began to influence the reporting of the situation.
Last week, 4,866 constables completed their training from Delhi Police Academy and have become available for active services of Delhi Police. Due to this, an opportunity has been obtained to correct the anomalies arising out of PCA, therefore, in this direction, after proper discussion, the administrative order to bring the PCR merger back to its former status in a modified manner, as per the attached implementation plan.
Meanwhile, as per the recent order, all the District Deputy Commissioners of Police should take special note that they will have full responsibility to keep the PCR vans running smoothly in their respective districts till the day indicated in the implementation plan.
