Gurugram cops flag poor quality of CCTV cameras

Sanjay Yadav

Gurugram, June 16

The Gurugram police have rejected over 1,000 CCTV cameras installed under the Smart City project stating that these do not serve the purpose of surveillance.

According to the police, these cameras are of no use at night as they have so far managed to record the headlights of vehicles rather than car numbers. After highlighting the issue repeatedly at many coordination meetings, the police have now written to Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) to discontinue these cameras in the second phase of the project.

“The CCTV cameras are for surveillance, especially at night. What is the point of having such cameras which cannot capture car numbers or faces at night. We have highlighted this issue many times to GMDA and asked them to get better ones now,” said a senior police official.

In the first phase of the project total 1,018 cameras were installed at 201 different points in city and out of these, 60 per cent cameras at 180 crucial spots are said to have poor night vision. The analysis comes after repeated failure of footage of these cameras to aid in dealing with crime. Crores of rupees were spent on installing these cameras.

According to the police, the cameras do not have good night vision. In case of any night crime, the footage only reveals flashing lights.

Maqsood Ahmed, DCP, East said the quality of cameras installed at roundabouts were of such poor quality that in the footage they could not even identify the make of the vehicle, vehicle number or colour of the dress worn by the accused. Many of these failed to take footage of speeding vehicles. The police did test runs with dummy vehicles to prove the point.

“The quality of cameras installed under the Smart City project in the city is poor. We have informed officials concerned and recommended not to install cameras like these in the second phase because these are of no use”, added Maqsood Ahmed.

However, GMDA differs as a senior officer of the Smart City Division of GMDA says cameras just have minor issues, which can be resolved.

“In the first phase these proved to be helpful in surveillance and the police have even issued challans to violators using the footage”, the officer added.