'Panic Button' Trials Successful in UP, to be Enforced Nationwide Soon: Maneka Gandhi

New Delhi: Safety tool ‘Panic Button’ — a women’s safety-oriented mobile application by Women and Child Development ministry (WCD)— has successfully completed its trial run in Uttar Pradesh and will be soon implemented across the country, said Union Minister Maneka Gandhi on Wednesday. “I am happy to inform that the user trial of Panic Button on mobile handsets has been successfully completed in 47 districts/locations of Uttar Pradesh, including rural areas. I have requested Home Minister Rajnath Singh to launch the Panic Button facility across the country at the earliest,” she tweeted.

The trial run of the safety app was started in Uttar Pradesh in March. The project was taken up with the Department of Telecommunications, in April 2016, making it mandatory for mobile phone manufacturers to provide panic buttons in cell phones by January 2017. The order said the phones will have to have the panic button in the form of numeric key 5 or 9 to make emergency calls. Gandhi stated that the minimum time for Police Dispatch Vans to reach the user site was recorded at two minutes while the maximum time was 26 minutes and average time recorded was 8 minutes. (IANS)