BJP leaders like Kiran Bedi, Meenakshi Lekhi give out different ideas on women’s safety in Delhi

NEW DELHI: BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi may have already announced a ‘comprehensive plan’ for women’s safety in the capital but her party doesn’t seem to have made up its mind on how to approach the problem.

Its New Delhi MP, Meenakshi Lekhi, on Wednesday talked about her vision to make the city safe for women using smart and tech-centric strategies of urban designing. This comes after several recent poll surveys, including one by ET, found women safety was the top concern for voters.

While other parties such as Congress and AAP have talked about their plans to deal with the problem, Kiran Bedi has time and again emphasized her ‘Six P strategy’ – involving people, politician, police, prosecution, prison and press. Bedi’s plan broadly includes building an army of civil defence by re-training and re-deploying defence volunteers across the city to ensure smart patrolling.

Lekhi’s plan, however, is slightly different: She said if BJP comes to power, the city could get "safety pillars" in subways and bus stands that are generally considered unsafe for women.

The pillars, she said, will have buttons which when pressed, will click and send pictures of the area to a central server. "Cameras can be broken but the pictures reach the centre in micro seconds even without internet and help can immediately be sent out," she said.

Incidentally, a few hours after Lekhi’s interaction, Bedi tweeted her 25-point programme to address the problem that included CCTVs in public places, smart patrolling, safe night life, stringent driver verification, self-defence training for women, civil defence escorts on buses, special women’s security force, 24/7 special call, among others. State BJP president Satish Upadhyay said the plans of Bedi and Lekhi were not entirely different but what Kiran Bedi said was her personal view.

"They are talking about the same thing. So it doesn’t matter if there are differences. The intent is the same." Other leaders of the party, however, told ET the coordination between party leaders, especially with regard to communication with Bedi, was not frequent which were leading to these problems.