Mohalla marshals to be deployed at all constituencies

NEW DELHI: Delhi’s women and child development minister Rajendra Pal Gautam on Friday said the pilot project on Mohalla Marshals – one of the assurances in the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) ‘guarantee card’ released in the run-up to the assembly polls – was a “success” in one constituency and very soon such volunteers would be deployed across all 70 assembly constituencies in the Capital.

Mohalla Marshals will be recruited from the existing chunk of civil defence volunteers enrolled with the government. The job would require them to keep an eye in areas that are unsafe for women and raise alarm in case of any distressing incident.

Gautam, on Friday, met Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Maliwal to discuss elaborate plans on Mohalla Marshals – an initiative to ensure safety of women – and forming a special welfare cell for women belonging to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities in the city.

Later in the day, Gautam held a meeting with officials of the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) with focus on drug abuse among minors – an issue that finds mention in AAP’S latest poll manifesto. “In our guarantee card, women safety is topmost priority. The plan is to set up mohalla marshals and strengthen Mahila panchayats in the coming months,” said Gautam, who is also Delhi’s social welfare minister.

He said, “With the help of DCW, we have conducted a pilot project on Mohalla Marshals in Burari wherein Civil Defence volunteers conducted regular checks in locations that were the most vulnerable and from where DCW received the maximum harassment complaints. The results were outstanding and should be implemented across all 70 assembly constituencies very soon.”

Maliwal said, “Seeing the atrocities on women from the SC/ST community, we welcome the idea of the minister and will add a special cell to work towards the welfare and offer protection to women from the SC/ST community.”