In a major lapse, high-end CCTVs non-functional

Twenty eight of the 63 high-end pan tilt zoom cameras which had been installed on high-rise buildings to keep a hawks eye in the national capital are reportedly non-functional for the past six months. Sensing the gravity of the matter, the Comptroller and Auditor General has sought the Delhi government’s comments on why the cameras are not functioning and why 35 remaining cameras had not been installed so far.

A senior officer of the information technology department attributed the delay in installing the remaining 35 cameras to “non-availability of high-rise buildings” in Delhi. The government has been quietly installing pan tilt zoom (PTZ) cameras on high-rise buildings since 2013. The first of the capital’s eye was installed at 19-storey high Palika Bhawan — the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) headquarters in Connaught Place. The PTZ camera, a closed-circuit television camera with remote directional and zoom control — was the first of its kind in the country which could capture images within a radius of five kilometres in clear weather and more than three kilometres in foggy conditions.

The camera reportedly works round-the-clock, irrespective of the weather and light conditions. A special control room had also been set up at NDMC building. The project, estimated worth about '120 crore, was implemented with the help of Survey of India, ministry of science and technology and National Mapping Agency.

The PTZ cameras were to provide an aerial and video photography for use by security agencies and to help create an integrated geospatial information system for surveillance and easy access by land use database, utility services and infrastructure departments. The cameras were also to use Internet protocol to transmit image data and control signals over a high speed Ethernet link. They were normally deployed together with a digital video recorder to form a video surveillance system.

The PTZ cameras can also capture colour images even at night and come with tilt-zoom and range-adjustment features. The total weight of the camera works around 28-30 kg. These cameras can only be installed on a 30 feet high platform or a building.

Among the sites where the cameras had been installed were Delhi police headquarters at ITO, CBSE building at Mayur Vihar, MCD’s Civic Centre at Jawaharlal Nehru Marg, Directorate of Health Services at Karkardooma, fire station building at Rohini, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and DDA building at Vasant Kunj.

The project was conceived in January 2010 in wake of the Commonwealth Games. As per the project, Lutyens’ Delhi was to be covered under the first phase of the project. The remaining parts of the Capital were to be covered in the second and third phase.