HIGHLIGHTS
-- We hope the government will give Delhi Police the rights to monitor the footage, said Madhur Verma,DCP.
-- Ajay Maken accused the AAP of compromising national security by buying cameras from a Chinese firm.
-- This project will ensure a safer city for Delhiites, especially women and children, said Arvind Kejriwal in
assembly on August 10, 2018.
The National Capital is set to be covered in a complex mesh of surveillance lenses, and if you look deep enough you'll see a gathering storm.
Two sets of cameras that are being mounted across Delhi - one by the Union governmentcontrolled law enforcement agencies and the other by the ruling AAP dispensation - have already triggered a sparring match over control of and access to the footage.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led government is moving ahead with its plan of installing 1.4 lakh CCTV cameras in the Capital and the trial run has begun with the setting up of 300 cameras across central Delhi's residential areas.
The Rs 571-crore project, one of the key pre-poll promises of the incumbent government, raises concerns over who will control the public data stored in the form of CCTV footage.
More so because the city already has more than 4,000 cameras deployed and managed by Delhi Police across its length and breadth.
"The home ministry, PMO, L-G and police - all failed to provide security to the people of Delhi. Criminals and anti-social elements will have some fear in them once the cameras are installed. This project will ensure a safer city for Delhiites, especially women and children," the chief minister had said on the floor of the Assembly on August 10, 2018.
The project has the potential to further strain the already tense ties between the office of L-G Anil Baijal and the Delhi government. One point of contention is that the AAP government doesn't want to pay a licence fee to the police and want the control over footage to rest with market associations and RWAs. The L-G, on the other hand, has suggested adopting a common set of guidelines for all CCTV cameras operating in the city, including those put up by the police.
Last year, the L-G constituted a panel to evolve a set of common guidelines for the police and the civilian government, but Kejriwal dubbed it 'illegal', accusing Baijal of obstructing the AAP government's flagship project.
Hailing the rolling-out of the CCTV camera project, AAP spokesperson and MLA from Greater Kailash Saurabh Bharadwaj said, "We will start meetings with Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs), who will decide where to install the cameras." The plan is to install 2,000 CCTV cameras in each of the 70 Assembly constituencies of Delhi. The government has already awarded the contract to Bharat Electronics Limited, a public sector firm that has roped in a Chinese company for procuring the instrument.
Officials of the Delhi government's PWD department, the nodal agency for executing the project, told Mail Today that the L-G's committee had not expressed objections to the standard operating procedure (SoP) of the project prepared by the government.
The SoP recommends meetings of the RWAs in every neighborhood with people from the firm that will install the cameras over where and how these should be placed. The recordings, it said, 'should' be given to the police, the government and RWAs.
"Installation of CCTV cameras either by public or government is going to be a help to us for maintaining better surveillance.
Also, we hope that the government will give the Delhi Police rights to monitor the footage," said Delhi Police spokesperson Madhur Verma.
Already, 4,388 CCTVs monitored by the Delhi Police are installed in police stations, court premises, markets, and other sensitive areas. An additional 2.45 lakh cameras installed across the city under the community policing initiative 'Nigehbaan', are unmanned and mostly defunct.
Not many are happy about the multiplicity of cameras in the city and consider it to be an invasion of privacy.
Udayaditya Banerjee, an advocate with the Supreme Court, said the government may justify the plan by attributing it to 'public interest'. He added: "Obviously records will be maintained -- which raises genuine concerns. From a democratic standpoint, you can have CCTVs at specific points say at traffic lights. Who will have access to the footage and who will own it? No matter how noble the reason, if I know I am being watched, there is a concern. Efficiency is not always the answer to snatching people's personal rights".
Even the Delhi Rules for Regulation of CCTV Systems in NCT of Delhi, 2018, formed by a committee appointed by the L-G, and criticised by Kejriwal, emphasise the 'need to strike a balance between the right to privacy and right to life and property by regulation of the processing, obtaining, holding, use or disclosure of information obtained through CCTVs by the civic bodies and individuals.'