The High Court directed the state government to respond to a PIL that sought directions to remove the Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) on national designated emergency numbers 112 and 100.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi and Justice S.R. Krishna Kumar passed the order on the petition filed by Arunkumar N.T. a resident of Nagadevanahalli in Bengaluru.
The petition requests for these emergency numbers to be similar to 101 and 108, where the caller in distress can speak to the person within five seconds. The petitioner informed the court that the IVR system in emergency number 112 requires the caller to choose any one of the options which takes more time, resulting in a waste of valuable time.
The IVRS system in 112 or 100 is taking a time of nearly one minute for the caller to choose the desired options like police assistance/traffic assistance/cybercrime assistance/enquiry, and this results in loss of precious time of the caller in emergency situation or distress, the petitioner pointed out.
“If any citizen, who is in distress or emergency, dials this number for assistance, he is made to go through an IVRS process. This is a flawed process adopted by the designers or the team of 112, as this asks the person in distress to go through the IVRS instructions. By the time the person, who is in panic, listens to the instructions, and understands, the line gets disconnected. Again, the caller needs to dial. In this whole process nearly one minute of crucial time is lost,” the petition said.
The petition further stated, “The more the chances are that the attacker on this person in distress would have overpowered within that one minute. So, it is natural that we can’t have IVRS to such emergency/distress numbers like that of Banking or Telecom call centres.”
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