Madhya Pradesh is looking to increase the ambit of the usage of mobile surveillance vehicles (MSVs). MSVs are police cars retrofitted with surveillance systems such as CCTV cameras that traverse in select cities of the state. These vehicles provide a 360-degree view of the areas that the car passes through with the help of four CCTV cameras installed on top of the vehicles.
In May, the Madhya Pradesh police issued a tender for installing 35 Tata Safari Storme vehicles with CCTV cameras that will be deployed in 10 cities of the State.
Each vehicle will have a pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera — a CCTV camera capable of remote direction and zoom control — installed at the front and three fixed cameras on the left, right and back of the vehicle. The recorded videos and photographs from the vehicles will be broadcast live in the State police’s data centre, the tender said.
This is not the first time that these vehicles will be deployed in Madhya Pradesh. Although MP police officials said that these vehicles run across the city, they are especially useful in places where there is no or less amount of CCTV coverage.
According to a cached document, hosted on the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy (SVPNPA) website as part of a prior presentation, Madhya Pradesh police have used such vehicles during the Simhasth Kumbh Mahaparv festival held between April 22, 2016, to May 21, 2016. In that festival, apart from the MSV vehicles, 14 facial recognition cameras, 7 ANPR cameras, and drones were used in Ujjain city
