Two police stations in Delhi, which manage large number of protests under their jurisdictions, were today provided with more staff to effectively deal with sit-ins and ensure proper law and order.
Parliament Street Police Station, which has Jantar Mantar - prominent place for dharnas, and North Delhi's Maurice Nagar Police Station - which covers Delhi University colleges in North Campus and thus witnesses several student protests, have been chosen for this initiative.
An event was organised by Delhi Police at the Parliament Street police station, that handles 12-13 dharnas on an average daily, where Delhi LG Anil Baijal formally declared the two police stations as "officer-oriented model police stations".
Baijal batted for "metropolitan policing" and also stressed that there needs to be a paradigm shift in how policing needs to be done in metros and it has to evolve to connect with the younger generation that is "aspirational" and has "fire in their belly".
Last year, the New Delhi District handled 4,666 demonstrations and dharnas.
It is expected of the officers of this police station to deal with the demonstrators with empathy and tact as well as professional efficiency, Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik said.
"Any negligence on the part of any police personnel can aggravate the situation leading to a more serious law and order problem.
"It has been decided to make Parliament Street police station more officer-oriented so that the handling of such demonstrators can be done mostly by officers of supervisory levels," he said.
Currently, the Parliament Street police station has a strength of 164 personnel, comprising three inspectors, 13 sub-inspectors, 34 assistant sub-inspectors, 27 head constables and 87 constables.
To make the police station more "officer-oriented", 123 additional number of police personnel will be posted at the police station.
The Maurice Nagar police station had witnessed clashes between members of the All India Students Association (AISA) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in February.
Following the incident, the force had come in for huge criticism for failing to handle the situation.
The genesis of the clash was an invite to JNU students Umar Khalid and Shehla Rashid to address a seminar on 'Culture of Protests' which was withdrawn by the college authorities following opposition by the ABVP.
Senior officers said that the police station will get almost 150 additional number of personnel to deal with such situations.
"With this change, it is expected that police officers will connect better with members of public staging demonstrations and dharnas, and demonstrators, especially youth, will be handled with better sensitivity, patience and professionalism," said Patnaik.
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