Delhi Police will now monitor all CCTVs installed in the capital

Since 2018, under a project launched by the previous AAP-led government, PWD has installed over 280,000 CCTV cameras in the city in two phases.

The Delhi Police will now be able to monitor footage from all CCTVs installed in the capital’s public spaces after the Public Works Department (PWD), which had previously controlled the majority of such cameras in the capital, granted it full access.

Most CCTVs installed by PWD are on roads, in government buildings and establishments.(HT Archives)

Under this project, which is currently being implemented, the Delhi Police will be able to access footage from cameras that the PWD has already installed without requiring permission. Moving forward, it will decide on the locations for new cameras. The installations and repairs for all the cameras will still be carried out by the government agency.

Delhi Police will now be able to monitor footage from all CCTVs.

Confirming the development, a Delhi Police spokesperson, said, “We are part of the surveillance under the ‘Safe City’ project. This is an extension of that. The CCTVs will be beneficial as police and PWD can access them in time.”

Delhi Police, under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), is in charge of law and order and internal security of the city and has installed 19,431 CCTVs since 2018-19. A senior police officer told HT that these cameras installed under the MHA’s ‘Safe City’ were too few in number.

Since 2018, under a project launched by the previous Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led government, PWD has installed over 280,000 CCTV cameras in the city in two phases.

To be sure, most CCTVs installed by PWD are located on roads, in government buildings and establishments, as well as at underpasses. In contrast, Delhi Police cameras are positioned on main roads, at metro and railway stations, the airport, and in markets.

“We are in the final stages of commissioning and making all CCTVs that are installed by us operational. Meanwhile, the relevant cameras and their access are being transferred to the police, following our discussions. The entire process will take some time,” said a PWD official.

Meetings to discuss this development had been ongoing since last year, until October of this year. The chief minister, PWD officials, special police commissioners, along with deputy chiefs of police (DCPs), were in attendance.

“This has been under discussion for a long time,” Madhup Tiwari, special commissioner of police (law and order), told HT. “PWD officials had agreed to provide access after our request. Later, we asked for access to newly installed cameras as well. That has also been approved. We have access to PWD cameras.”

‘Will speed up investigations’

This comes after senior police officers, at a security review meeting with the chief minister last year, flagged the hurdles Delhi Police faced in obtaining CCTV footage during investigations. Till now, it had to first approach PWD officials or junior engineers for permissions and access to the feeds. A police officer, requesting anonymity, also stated that many cameras were found to be defunct or lacked the capacity to store footage for 30 or more days when retrieved. This slowed down investigations in serious crime cases, particularly murders, robberies, hit-and-runs, and street crimes.

At a final high-level meeting, chaired by the CM last month, the police were allowed to view and retrieve footage directly from the control panels of PWD cameras. “We needed more CCTVs. This is not only for cases but for women’s safety and surveillance. Senior Delhi government officers agreed that women's safety needs to be improved, and this will help,” the senior police officer quoted above said.

“There will be no need to push officials or engineers. Or discover defunct cameras. We will be kept in the loop of all new locations where cameras are installed, and we will also oversee audits.”

A DCP-level officer stated that the police had begun receiving various passwords for the PWD-installed cameras during the meetings. Confirming this, another special commissioner, who asked not to be named, said, “The password sharing process has been started.”

The police further said that the transfer of control also meant PWD’s ongoing project to install 50,000 additional CCTV cameras will now be finalised by Delhi Police: they will oversee every new camera location, angle, and storage configuration. “This time, the locations will be decided from a law-and-order and crime-prevention perspective. We will decide where cameras are needed most,” the DCP officer, quoted above, said.

Cameras found defunct, audit underway

In March this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Delhi government, speaking to the media after an audit, said that of the 280,000 PWD cameras in the city, 32,000 were defunct, while 15,000 that had been commissioned had not been installed by that time.

At the time, the government’s anti-corruption branch (ACB) also lodged a case against former PWD minister Satyender Jain over allegations of corruption in the CCTV project, which was estimated to be worth ₹571 crore. The ACB alleged that Jain had taken huge bribes to waive the ₹16 crore fines imposed on a private firm that delayed the installation of the CCTVs. Moreover, it alleged, the AAP government gave more contracts to the same firm to set up more CCTVs.

Three months later, in July, PWD minister Pravesh Verma told the media that a report submitted by the department to the government had identified all the faulty CCTVs from among the 250,000 cameras it had reviewed.

As a result, the department initiated a technical audit of its existing CCTV network. Officials said the audit is being done by a consultant and will focus on camera health, coverage gaps and maintenance. It is set to be completed by November 30.

The department also began clearing a backlog of cameras that had yet to be installed, which were part of the first phase.