If you are a south Mumbai resident, get ready for a gift coming right from the home department. Soon South Mumbai will have 1,415 functional CCTVs, which would step up surveillance at crucial places of the city. Highly placed sources in the department said chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is expected to inaugurate the cameras that will cover places such as traffic headquarters, Command Control Centers, Gateway of India, Police Headquarters, Zaveri Bazaar and so on.
In the next phase, scheduled to be completed by April 2016, CCTV cameras will be installed in north and east Mumbai. In the third phase, central and west Mumbai will be covered by September 2016. The project was first proposed during the earlier Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government after the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai and has been delayed since. It could not move ahead despite bids being invited four times. The Bharatiya Janata Party( BJP)-led government, after coming to power last year, formed a high-power committee to push the project and contract for the same was signed in February this year.
According to Fadnavis, the project aims at holistic and integrated video surveillance system to bring reforms in the security and safety for people in the city. As many as 20 thermal cameras will cover and capture (any) possible movement on the vast coastal stretch of the city as well as in the sea. The state-of-the-art project will ensure two command centres, one in Mumbai police commissioner’s office and the other in the suburbs of Kalina. It will also ensure traffic police headquarters to manage the traffic efficiently. All police stations will have a provision to monitor feeds along with DCP and Regional Additional CP offices. It will provide state-of-the art applications to manage and store the video-feeds.
