The day is not far off when you walk down any main bazaar in Hyderabad, your movement would be recorded at least by a hundred to two hundred cameras, both private and public. Your movements will be watched on the roads, colonies, offices, shops, malls, bus stops, rail stations, airport, movie halls. Now, the Police want to extend their surveillance network even into interior colonies as well. You would also be under the watchful eye of the big brother when you enter a police station very soon.
Hyderabad will soon join club elite cities such as London, Beijing, Chicago, Houston, New York etc that erected largest surveillance network in the world. On the way to becoming a smart city, the first thing the historic Hyderabad going acquire is surveillance technology. About a lakh cameras are being installed in the city in the next few months. According to sources , the police are roping in the residents welfare associations to install CCTVs at all nodal points in their colonies. Already shop owners started installing cameras to keep a watch on the people coming in and going out of the shop along with the passersby.
Government sources said plans are afoot to install more than 90,000 community cameras by residential colony welfare associations across the sprawl of the city. And another 10,000 CCTV cameras by the police department are in the process of being installed in the Greater Hyderabad limits at a cost of about Rs 500 crore.
As part of the strengthening of the surveillance network in the City, the police establishment is planning to install cameras inside the police station also. In the first phase as many as 450 cameras will be installed in 50 police stations, offices of deputy police commissioners, offices of assistance commissioners. The work will be taken up in the next couple of months.This is in compliance with the Supreme Court directive to set up monitoring systems in lock-ups and interrogation room in police stations. Growing number of lock-up deaths in the country forced the SC to direct the state government to keep a watch on the happening in the lock-ups and interrogation rooms. Many lock-up deaths led to serious law and order problems in cities. In the first phase 328 dome cameras will be set up inside police stations and lock-ups along with 122 bullet cameras ourside the station houses. senior police officials will have access to the footage of these cameras and they can monitor the happenings in the stations citing from their offices. If the resident association’s program of installing CCTV cameras is completed, the number of cameras that keep watch on you in the city will be over one lakh. This is huge number when compared to other cities in the world. According to a senior police official who worked in the IT side of the policing, London with its about 5 lakh cameras is considered most closely watched in city in the world. Beijing, capital city of China, stands next with 4 lakh cameras, followd by Chicago, Houston and New York.