Home / Elections / Assembly Election / News / Akhilesh dials 100 to win hearts and votes

Akhilesh dials 100 to win hearts and votes

The 3,200 brand new Police Control Room (PCR) vehicles have become a mascot of the CM's promise

akhilesh, yadav, BSP, election, UP
Premium
Akhilesh Yadav
Karan Choudhury Ayodhya (Faizabad, UP)
Last Updated : Feb 20 2017 | 1:15 AM IST
Connect with us
Facebook IconLinkedIN Icon
Till a few months earlier, 23-year-old Ashlesha Mishra rushed back home from her job as a computer operator for an exporter by 6 pm.

Anything later and father would start calling her, furiously worried, “It’s unsafe in the evening, he would simply say,” she recalls.

Cut to now and she breathes much easier, as her curfew has been extended by an hour and a half, “That is a lot for a place like Faizabad,” she smiles.

For her and the women in Uttar Pradesh, the new sense of security is courtesy Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s much-mentioned Rs 2,325 crore ‘UP-100’ project. While the main idea is to respond in the least possible time to any crime, it has a bigger purpose — to change the perception of the Samajwadi Party-led government, on its usually vulnerable spot, law and order.

The 3,200 brand new Police Control Room (PCR) vehicles have become a mascot of the CM’s promise to get a grip on this issue in the state’s 75 districts. For Yadav, these PCR vans are a way to change the perception of the people in UP and outside, to one that his government is tough on criminals, not into harbouring them.

Three months earlier, the CM launched a state-wide integrated emergency service, the UP-100, in Lucknow. UP-100 is the official name of Uttar Pradesh Police Emergency Management System, previously termed the ‘Dial 100’ project. A high-tech centralised emergency call system ensures police reach a caller in a maximum of 20 minutes in rural areas and 15 minutes in urban areas. Round the clock.  

The visible crown jewels of the project are the PCR vehicles, omni-present round the clock, in every district. It is these that seem to have helped the SP government get back a chunk of goodwill, and in a short while, which they’d lost over the years.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau data (‘Crime In India 2015 Compendium’), this state saw the highest numbers of different types of crime. At 40,613 cases of reported violent crime, 12.1 per cent of all such cases in the country, the state led the list. And, the highest number of murders, 4,732 of 32,127 all-India cases, 14.7 per cent.

Uttar Pradesh also reported 10.9 per cent or 35,527 of the 327,394 cases of crimes against women (Bengal was second, with 33,212) during 2015.

A series of major events had recently further marred the government claims of a safe state. Gangrape of two women in Bulandshahr in July 2016, death of three people in violence in Bijnor in September — these and many more had created a furore here and elsewhere.

In less than four months, the CM has been able to change that. Women feel safer — unlike earlier, police do turn up and in a short time. “Police now listen to us; everything is transparent. He has managed to make our wives and daughters feel safe. What more can one ask for?” lauds Sadiq Ali, president of the Ayodhya Muslim Welfare Society.  

Connect with us on WhatsApp

More From This Section

Game on in UP as wave in favour of anyone missing

<b>Story in numbers</b>: Uttar Pradesh lags in key metrics

<b>UP Assembly Elections 2017</b>: Why Mayawati needs to reinvent

<b>Devangshu Datta: </b>Political risk tempered by bullishness

First Published: Feb 19 2017 | 11:58 PM IST

Explore News

Next Story