Model police stns at Maurice Ngr, Parliament street

Two important Delhi Police stations started functioning as model stations from Wednesday.

These station were equipped with senior officers and 33% women personnel, in a possible bid to repair the force’s image following shoddy handling of campus clashes two months ago.

Parliament Street Police Station and north Delhi’s Maurice Nagar next to Delhi University, the centre of protests in February, will be part of the first-of-itskind exercise.

Lieutenant governor Anil Baijal inaugurated the initiative at Parliament Street police station – next to Jantar Mantar — in the presence of police chief Amulya Patnaik on Wednesday.

“The objective is to bring a change among staff in the way they work and behave with the public,” said a senior officer.

These two stations will now have the maximum number of senior officials such as inspectors, sub-inspectors, and assistant sub-inspectors and lesser constabularies. A regular station has two or three inspectors and ten to fifteen sub-inspectors. But with this new officer- oriented policing concept, each of the two police stations will have seven inspectors, 40 sub-inspectors, 40 assistant sub-inspectors and 60 head constables.

Maurice Nagar and Parliament Street will also become the first stations where a third of the staff would be women. This means the stations would have at least two women inspectors.

“The presence of more inspectors, sub-inspectors, and assistant sub-inspectors means complaints will be heard and addressed in a more professional manner,” added the officer.

The decision to turn the two stations into officer-oriented facilities was taken last month by the police commissioner following a meeting at the L-G’s office where Baijal mooted the idea.

Sources in police, however, attributed this decision to the Delhi Police’s “unprofessional” and “poor” handling of the February clashes at Ramjas College where many reported police personnel misbehaving .