CCTV network to be in place by Aug

“The monitoring centres will be at the Police Commissioner’s office,PMC,PCMC,collector’s office and offices of the two additional CPs and four zonal DCPs. All police stations will have access to the feeds in their areas,” said Home Secretary Vineet Agarwal,who was in Pune to make a presentation on the project.

Police Commissioner Gulabrao Pol,Joint Commissioner of Police Sanjiv Kumar Singhal,Divisional Commissioner Prabhakar Deshmukh and Collector Vikas Deshmukh were part of the meeting held at the divisional commissioner’s office.

Agarwal said the home department had signed a contract with the Allied Digital Services Limited,giving it 42 weeks to complete the project. “As many as 440 main spots have been chosen for Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad areas,and with high definition cameras,we will get very clear pictures,” he added. While 1,068 will be static cameras,217 cameras will have the facility to zoom,pan and tilt. As many as 78 CCTV cameras will help capture number plates of vehicles.

Divisional Commissioner Prabhakar Deshmukh said the pending project would now get a push.

Agarwal added that the locations would not be disclosed and the project would be carried out in phases. “The project will have the data centres installed by March 3 while the work is to be undertaken zone wise under the police commissionerate. The installation of the CCTVs for zone-I should start on March 24 and the work should be completed by April 28,followed by the remaining three zones. The entire project should be ready by August 18,2014. This should be inclusive of data centre operations as well as corroborated monitoring with GIS and GPS. A private agency will be hired for monitoring the data. While 51 people will be deployed for the project,35 of them will be only viewing the footage,” he said.

The project also plans to link some malls and other establishments to establish the security network. Even as the Mumbai CCTV network was supposed to start earlier,Agarwal said the agency appointed for it had delayed the project. “It is a huge project and we are hoping that the agency will complete the project on time,” he said.