Telangana is engaging citizens in community CCTV project

With community CCTV project, the Hyderabad City Police is encouraging citizens to set CCTV system and integrate it with nearest police stations to track, monitor and analyse the video feed to enhance safety and security

By Mohd Ujaley

In her famous work, Participation and Democratic Theory, Carole Pateman, the renowned feminist and political theorist, advocated a greater role for common people in democratic self-rule and argued that development projects are more effective when beneficiaries have a role in the way projects are chosen, planned, implemented, and evaluated. Giving citizen a part in initiatives designed for their benefit is considered to be an ideal way to ensure sustainability and success of any project. And that is what, Hyderabad City Police seems to be doing with its recently launched IP based video surveillance project through community participation programme.

With this community CCTV programme, the Hyderabad City Police is encouraging enterprises, public sector units, resident welfare associations and individuals to buy CCTV system from government empaneled firms and setup monitoring centre in thier own colonies in addition to integrating it with nearest police stations and to the central command center to track, monitor and analyse the video feed for detecting criminal activities, traffic violations, road conditions etc. According to the project, an entity or individual will buy CCTV system that will cover premises entry, exit and parking areas to the extent of 50 yards on the road, along with storage and video screen for monitoring by themselves within the colony. The back end connectivity to Police Stations, Command Control Centre along with Video Analytics will be provided by Government of Telangana.

The senior officials who are involved in this project say, the basic aim is to empower the communities to enhance their own safety and security by ensuring their participation at different levels of this project and ultimately, make the city an attractive destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). “As you know, we have been taking many steps to improve overall security and safety through citizen friendly policing initiatives in the city but this project is quite unique in a sense that now people will own this project and play a defining role at different stages of the programme,” M. Mahendar Reddy, Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad City told FE.

In order to ensure people’s participation, the government has enacted the TS Public Safety (Measures) Enforcement Act, 2013 with the provision of expanding citizens participation in creating larger footprint of IP based video surveillance systems throughout the city by covering premises entry, exit and parking areas and roads in front of establishments to the extent of 50 yards.

It is a marathon task to cover the entire city with installation of CCTV system, maintaining the quality, competitive price and servicing the system on a regular basis without having proper governance structure in place. Therefore, an open tender for the appointment of solution providers was floated to design, supply, install, test and maintain the CCTV system for five years with an on-site comprehensive warranty. According to official, the objective of the tender was to select the qualitative bidders who satisfy the stringent quality standards, acquire cutting-edge technologies and standard process and procedures with an operating governance structure. Selection was done based on the open tender process by evaluating the organisation capabilities, technical competencies and price competitiveness.

In fact, the bidders prices were rate contracted to make an offer to the community for installation of CCTV systems. Since, CCTV systems are costly, therefore government is also encouraging citizens to form community groups throughout the city in their respective neighborhood to share the cost burden of every member in the community.

It is not Hyderabad City Police alone which is focusing on CCTV surveillance, Surat has also created a state-of- the-art real-time CCTV surveillance network and also Maharashtra has recently launched pan-Mumbai surveillance project which envisages to install 6,000 CCTV cameras in Greater Mumbai at the cost of Rs 949 crore by mid-2016. However, the engagement of the citizen is unique to the project of Hyderabad City Police as it has never been successfully attempted in the past.

So far over 200 community groups have been formed and around 4000 cameras have been installed at various parts of the city and according to the official, it is exponentially growing. “The end target is to achieve around one lakh cameras to cover every-inch of the city in order to build a safe and secure city and enhancement of living standards,” states Reddy.