New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the city police to install sanitary pad vending machines at all police stations in the capital for women personnel and also provide them with exclusive washrooms.
A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia asked the Commissioner of Police to survey all police stations within six weeks to ascertain the availability of exclusive washrooms and sanitary pads, and then take appropriate steps.
“Based on the report of the survey, appropriate steps shall be taken by the police to provide each police station with the facility of a sanitary pad vending machine and also an exclusive washroom for women personnel,” said the bench.
“We require the Commissioner of Police to get a survey conducted of all police stations in Delhi… The survey shall be conducted in six weeks,” it ordered.
Listing the matter for hearing on September 23, the court sought an affidavit from the police detailing the steps taken pursuant to the directions.
The court passed the order while issuing notice to the Centre, Delhi government and the police on a public interest litigation (PIL) for securing female police personnel’s right to access to basic menstrual hygiene and sanitation facilities at the workplace.
The PIL by NGO Justice for Rights Foundation said ensuring such essential infrastructure for women police personnel was indispensable to the constitutional mandate embodied in Article 21 of the Constitution, as they are an indispensable facet of the right to live with dignity, health, privacy and humane conditions at work.
Relying on information received under the RTI regime, the petitioner asserted that despite thousands of female police personnel serving across hundreds of police stations in Delhi, sanitary pad vending machines were available only in a few and there was a complete absence of any budgetary allocation or policy to provide hygiene facilities or infrastructure to them.
“This omission on the part of the State transcends a mere administrative lapse…. The Respondents’ failure to provide such basic infrastructure violates their dignity, health, privacy, and safe working conditions, contrary to Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution,” claimed the PIL.
It therefore sought a direction to authorities to install and ensure the continuous functionality and maintenance of sanitary pad vending machines and sanitary incinerators in all police stations and units under the Delhi Police.
The PIL also prayed for clean, functional, private and adequately equipped washrooms exclusively for women police personnel at all Delhi Police establishments.
