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As mishaps haunt Mohali roads, CCTV project hits another hurdle
Fresh tenders to be floated after it was found that the bidders who had earlier been cleared had quoted a higher price
Mohali: Even as Mohali roads continue to be death traps for commuters – with at least 21 lives, on an average, lost in accidents in every month, the much-awaited closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera project, which was to facilitate automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and red-light violation detection (RLVD), has hit another roadblock – the fifth in over three years. The reason: The bidders for the project had quoted a much higher price than what was floated in the tender.
Data accessed from the traffic police shows that in the last 10 months, Mohali has seen 377 accidents, in which 210 people lost their lives.
A senior police officer said, “Most accidents happen due to speeding or jumping of red-lights.”
The CCTV project was expected to help check reckless driving, by way of starting e-challaning of violators, and thus, bring down the count of accidents and fatalities, but it has been stalled again.
The senior police officer, while stating that they were aiming to start e-challaning by June 2024, stated, “This time, we were really hopeful as two companies had cleared the technical bid.”
The Punjab Police Housing Corporation (PPHC) technical committee had last month given a go-ahead to open the financial bid after CCTV cameras installed by two companies at Sector 69 Chowk for demo, had cleared the technical evaluation with an accuracy of over 90%.
A high-level, five-member committee had earlier rejected the technical bids from companies four times in three years over the poor quality of CCTVs. During the earlier bids, the cameras could reach an accuracy of only around 87%, against PPHC’s requirement of 90%.
Notably, the PPHC has a budget of over ₹15.5 crore for the installation of these cameras. While around ₹10 crore was sanctioned for installation of cameras in 2020, ₹5 crore was sanctioned earlier this year by the present state government.
As per the plan, initially 390 cameras were to be installed at 20 vulnerable intersections across the district at a cost of ₹8.50 crore while the rest of the junctions were to be covered eventually.
Data shows that a whopping 62% of the total road fatalities reported last year came from six areas of Mohali — Airport Road, Sohana, Kharar, Zirakpur, Lalru and Dera Bassi. And all these areas have little or no CCTV coverage.
During the first phase of the project, CCTV cameras were to be installed on the stretch from Airport Chowk to Zirakpur road, Chawla Chowk crossing, Phase 3/5 crossing, Max Hospital, Sunny Enclave gate, IISER Chowk, Radha Soami Chowk, PCA stadium crossing (Phase 9/10), Purab Apartments crossing among others.
In Chandigarh, over 7 lakh traffic violators were challaned in the first 10 months through CCTV cameras installed under the smart city project. This also helped the police to generate a revenue of over 8 crores through penalties.
Fresh tenders to be floated
With the latest bids rejected, a senior administrative officer said that the fresh tenders would be floated next week. “Though we could not convince the lowest bidder to further revise the quotation, we are not going to waste any time in recalling tenders and are hopeful of allotting the contract for installing CCTV here by the end of January. The installation will take another six months,” the officer said.
