Shiv Sena to launch an app to help women in distress

Shiv Sena has become the latest political party to head the smartphone way. The party has launched a smartphone app for women that can be used to send out SOS messages in dire straits.   Keeping the upcoming general elections this year in mind and the serious safety issues faced by women all over the country, the Sena has come up with the “S4U”, or Shiv Sena for you app for smartphones.   The app is to be launched for public use on Thursday and is currently only available for Android handsets. There is no word on whether the S4U app will come to iOS and Windows Phone or even BlackBerry in the future.   The S4U app will be pretty simple to use, keeping in mind that it is a distress application, after all. Either by using features within the app or shaking the phone vigorously twice, a woman in distress will be able to send alerts to 10 phone numbers at any given point of time. One will also be able to press the power button four times to send an alert.   The numbers to contact will need to be pre-fed into the application. The app will also send a message to the local police simultaneously. Currently the app features phone numbers of police stations of only Mumbai city, but the party hopes to expand the reach of this app to a state and nation-wide level.   Of course, the party will add its own touch to the app too. The S4U app will also feature numbers of Sena’s shaka pramukhs (division heads) and the police will be roped in to help out too. Even while the Sena aims to make police stations an integral part of the app, as mentioned above, the team is still collecting data about them.   The app will be released on January 23, the birth anniversary of the Sena’s founder Bal Thackeray and will be available for download right away. However, reports have suggested that the services will only be activated a week after its availability. You will be able to download the S4U from the Google Play Store and Shiv Sena’s own website.