Cops hassled over orders for booking hotel rooms

LUCKNOW: End result to begin with. Station incharges of various police stations have been left fuming for obvious reasons after directives were given to them to arrange for hotel rooms in the state capital.
Over 90 senior police officials and medal winners (most of them have already arrived), are arriving in the city to attend the felicitation ceremony to be held at Indira Gandhi Pratishthan in Gomtinagar on Sunday.
Chief minister Mayawati is expected to give away medals and certificates to the selected cops, whose names were announced on August 15.
The two reasons troubling the station incharges is that the directives to arrange for the hotel rooms have come at a time when the marriage season's peak time has left very few hotels with rooms available.
Secondly, who would pay the charges for these hotel rooms is not clear to the station incharges. Past experiences make them believe that either the hotels would have to bear the burden or the respective police stations would be coughing up the hotel bill.
So, senior police officials' directives to cops at various police stations to book rooms at the hotels falling under their respective police station areas have actually given them sleepless nights.
Sources said because of the marriage season and other constraints, only over three dozen rooms could be booked in various hotels falling under different police station areas. Rest others have made their own arrangement, sources added.
Adding to this, several senior officials not finding the hotel rooms good enough have also decided to make some alternate arrangement on their own. However, strangely, no one is ready to own the responsibility as to who actually directed the police stations to arrange for the hotel rooms.
The requisition for hotel rooms has come from the Reserve Police Lines, said ASP (trans-Gomti), Happy Guptan, who added that it was a situational demand as the two guest houses available with the police department were already booked for some other function. Guptan, however, feigned ignorance about who would foot the hotel bill.
Strangely, Reserve Inspector, Police Lines Awadhesh Pandey denied sending any requisition for hotel rooms. A few station incharges preferring anonymity said that the hotel room request has actually come from Lines through senior police officials.
When contacted, DIG Lucknow, DK Thakur said that the officers concerned will be paying for the hotel accommodation when they get their TA/DA bills reimbursed.