New Delhi: Ordering a survey of all city police stations on how women-cop-friendly these are, Delhi High Court Wednesday asked for sanitary pad vending machines to be installed at all police stations along with exclusive washroom in the capital.A bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia said the survey be conducted within six weeks. “Based on the report of the survey, appropriate steps shall be taken to provide each police station with the facility of a sanitary pad vending machine and also an exclusive washroom for women personnel,” HC said.The HC passed the order while issuing notice to the Centre, Delhi govt and the police on a public interest litigation (PIL) for securing female police personnel’s right to access basic menstrual hygiene and sanitation facilities at the workplace. The matter is listed for hearing on Sep 23.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 for them.The PIL by NGO Justice for Rights Foundation said that ensuring such essential infrastructure for women police personnel was indispensable to the constitutional mandate embodied in Article 21, as it is an indispensable facet of the right to live with dignity, health, privacy and humane conditions at work.
