Paradip, April 16: Subhash Rout decided to lodge an online complaint after he had lost his mobile phone in transit.
The 19-year-old engineering student from Paradip logged on to the citizen portal of Odisha police to file the complaint but was unable to do it due to a glitch in the portal's server.
As part of e-governance to smoothen lodging FIRs, the police on October 3 launched the citizen portal, a public-police interface enabling citizens to file complaints online and avail themselves of other police services without visiting police stations.
The portal, which constitutes a vital component of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System project, has, however, failed to attract complainants with the number of online registration of cases being extremely low. A reality check in Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur districts, which incidentally account for filing of a large number of cognisable offences, portray poor response to the portal.
As many as 27 police stations, including six marine ones, are in operation in both the districts. Since the launch of the portal six months ago, less than a hundred complaints related to cognisable offences have been lodged online.
The system of complaint registration is immensely beneficial for people, especially women and senior citizens, who are either hesitant or find it difficult to go to the police stations. However, for a variety of reasons, the scheme has failed to pick up momentum. Only 36 cognisable offence FIRs have been registered online at the 14 police stations from October 3 till April 10, said Kendrapara additional superintendent of police Ramesh Mohanty.
Often it is found that the people are unaware of the system. Besides, many do not prefer it as they do not have Internet connectivity at home, said Mohanty.
The district police have now decided to organise public-police interface programmes to make people aware of the utility value of the citizen's portal for online complaint registration. The portal offers a number of services to complainants, including request for an FIR copy, registration of missing persons, request for events and processions, registration of loss of property, submission of request for availing one of character certificate and tenant and employee verification, the police officer said.
The police stations are badly equipped with IT infrastructure. The computers at most of the police stations are bereft of hassle-free Internet connectivity. Either the computers are defunct or do not have Internet connectivity. There are instances of the district police headquarters receiving the online FIR and delivering the hardcopy of online FIRs to police stations, said police officials.
Paradip additional police super Madhabanand Sahoo said: "Through the portal, people mostly file missing reports, permission for procession, meetings and use of microphones in rallies. The inspectors in charge of all stations have been asked to motivate the people to go online."
"We had lodged an online complaint when some youths created noise pollution with loudspeakers in the locality. However, the police did not act and said they had not received any online FIR. They swung into action after receiving a written complaint," said a Kendrapara resident.