AAP government’s plea that it should be allowed to perform functions like licensing, traffic management, passport verification and creating a state disaster response force, was opposed by the city police in the Delhi High Court today.
Maintaining that its role “cannot be segregated in terms of core and non-core policing”, the Delhi Police said the Delhi government’s stand was a “misconceived” attempt to usurp the functions statutorily bestowed upon the agency.
It has also sought that a Delhi government notification of January 9, appointing deputy commissioners (revenue) of all revenue districts in Delhi as the licensing authorities for city cinema halls, be kept in abeyance as it could lead to a direct conflict with the Commissioner of Police.
The submissions have been made in an affidavit filed by the police before a bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva, before which the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government has filed the application for segregation of core and non-core functions of the police.
The police has said that under the Delhi Police Act of 1978, it has the mandate to look after all the functions including, prevention, detection and investigation of crimes, traffic management, passport verification and licensing.
It has also said these functions are closely related to each other and essential for smooth policing in Delhi.
With regard to framing rules for using CCTV cameras, Delhi Police has said a meeting scheduled with the city government for November 3 was deferred twice and no date has been fixed so far.
Delhi police told the court that it was in the process of framing detailed standard operating procedures to deal with the aspect of privacy, authencity of data, chain of command, among others.
The court on October 14 had directed both Delhi government and police to come out with draft rules on protection of privacy, chain of command with regard to custody of the data, its storage, prevention of misuse of live feed, among others.
( Source – PTI )
