A day after the Delhi High Court pulled up the Centre for placing austerity measures before the issue of women’s safety in the city, the Delhi government has begun preparing a proposal to install CCTV cameras across the Capital in a time-bound manner.
With the Centre informing the Court about its austerity measures, which made it difficult to increase the number of policemen in the city, the Court observed that the government must ensure that life and liberty do not take a back seat.
The Court said it had taken a judicial note of the fact that the law and order situation in Delhi was “abysmal”.
The Delhi government’s decision to install cameras, which was a major poll plank for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) before it came to power earlier this year, was conveyed to the Delhi High Court on Wednesday along with information about the State government’s willingness to bear the cost of setting up the CCTV cameras. The decision was taken during a meeting with Delhi Police officers on October 8 and includes 44 “sensitive locations”.
According to the proposal, the CCTV cameras will be installed in all police stations and in 44 “red flag zones”, which have been identified after a crime mapping study conducted last year.
However, there was a difference of opinion about the control over live feeds obtained from these cameras.
A Division Bench of the High Court, comprising Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, has now directed the Delhi government and Delhi Police to frame draft rules for controlling access to live feeds from the cameras, while observing that these should cover aspects of protection of privacy, custody, archiving of data and prevention of misuse of live feeds.
Posting the case for further hearing on November 18, the Court has directed that the framing of rules be undertaken as early as possible and that these be placed before it on the next date of hearing.
The High Court was hearing a public interest litigation initiated by itself following the December 16 gangrape incident.
The Court has been issuing a slew of directions for appointment of more police personnel, establishing additional forensic laboratories and creating a victim compensation fund.
