Police Commissioner M.A. Saleem has said that the installation of 118 surveillance cameras at Mysore palace has been completed and the new surveillance system will be operational soon.
With this, the interior and exterior of the palace will come under total surveillance before Dasara.
Control room
The master control room at the palace would be linked to the traffic command centre at the office of the Police Commissioner for constant monitoring of the footage, Mr. Saleem told presspersons here on Monday.
Two cameras would keep watch on Dasara elephants, which arrived here recently; these would start functioning in a couple of days, he said.
Besides these 118 cameras, installed on the recommendation of the Mysore City police, 16 closed-circuit television cameras are already in place.
The security upgrade was recommended given the prominence of the palace on the tourism circuit.
Puja for elephants
On Ganesh festival, Forest Department officials offered puja for Dasara elephants at the palace on Monday. The Police Commissioner was also present.
The jumbos were fed fruits, sugarcane, jaggery and coconut.
The authorities presented clothes to the mahouts.
Srirama joins the group
Srirama, a Dasara elephant that was supposed to arrive with the second batch of elephants, joined the group already in Mysore on Sunday.
Deputy Conservator of Forest S.N. Devaraj told The Hindu that Srirama was supposed to be part of an operation to capture a wild elephant that had strayed from the forest in Bangalore Rural district. “As the wild elephant was successfully driven back to the Savandurga forests, the operation was called off. But Srirama, which belonged to the K. Gudi elephant camp, had reached near Mysore and so was kept here after taking permission from the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests,” he said.
