NEW DELHI: April 7, 2015, DHNS:
Hundreds of frivolous calls were received in the Delhi government’s anti-corruption helpline 1031 on its first day of relaunch, where as the traffic of all the calls ran into 12,731 in last 24 hours.
Sources in government said some of the callers phoned in only to congratulate Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for his anti-corruption efforts.
“Some non-serious calls were also logged,” said an aide of Kejriwal, while claiming that the response to the revamped anti-corruption helpline has gone beyond expectation on the first day.
Unconfirmed reports said the number of calls on the first day crossed the 10,000 mark as nearly 5,000 calls were received in the first three hours of the launch of the helpline on Sunday evening.
A similar trend of non-serious calls was witnessed during the AAP government’s 49-day stint in 2014.
“Just about 4,000 calls were related to corruption. The rest of 1.2 lakh calls were non-serious in 2014,” said a volunteer.
On Monday, a few callers dialled the 1031 number to give complaints related to women safety. “We redirected them to the 181 Women Helpline,” said an AAP volunteer.
To publicise the launch of the helpline, huge hoardings carrying photos of Kejriwal have sprung up across the city. In these hoardings, the Chief Minister is seen exhorting people to pay up to a bribe-seeker and then do a sting on him.
A group of volunteers has been trained to run the 24x7 helpline and attend the calls in English and Hindi. The executives will also direct the callers on how to conduct sting operations. All the calls will be divided into two categories: serious and non-serious.
A caller can complain against bribe demands by a government official or can report corruption if you have recorded audio or video evidence against an officer. Within 48 hours, a member of the Anti-Corruption Branch will contact the complainant and collect evidence.
Any sting video or audio clip will be put through a forensic test during the investigation, which will be handled by the ACB.
The new avatar of the 1031 helpline is equipped to cater to around 10,000 calls per day as opposed to the previous count of 1,000 calls per day during Kejriwal’s earlier stint. In 2014, around 75 per cent calls could not be attended to due to limited number of phone lines.
The government has also decided to strengthen the ACB by increasing funds from Rs 8 crore to Rs 15 crore and inspector posts from 30 to 40.
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