The wait for an upgrade

A fund of Rs 200 crore was earmarked for the ambitious project. But the pace of the project,just like the movement of traffic during rush hours,has been extremely slow.

Additional Commissioner of Police Traffic Anil Shukla underlines that the intelligent traffic management project has not been scrapped. He said 17 companies have risen to the challenge of developing the system.

The technology required is not available off the shelf. If we bring technology from abroad,it will have to be customised to Indian requirements. We have already appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as consultant and the tenders will be floated soon, he said.

Rs 200 crore was sanctioned in 2011 and the authorities had five years to implement the project.

For the first year,Rs 85 crore was handed over,but sources said when the project did not take-off,no fund was allocated for the second year.

At present,the intelligent traffic management system does not have any funds earmarked for it.

The traffic police had plans for a pilot project in parts of the city. As of date,it remains stuck in a jam.

Electronic penalty

Two years before the capital hosted the Commonwealth Games,the Delhi Traffic Police had drafted a proposal to bring in electronic-challan devices. Devices linked to the police central database were meant to provide quick information about anyone who breaks traffic rules to the personnel on the roads.

The gadgets were also a way to improve the police image at the time of the mega sporting event.

Five years down the road,most traffic policemen are still scribbling in their challan books.

The then Joint Commissioner of Police Traffic S N Shrivastava wrote the e-challan plan in August 2008 and the bidding process concluded within a year. Police sources claimed that the then advisor to the department objected to the plan on technical grounds. Since then,there have been many more bidding processes successful and otherwise.

Police then moved to the trial stage.

In 2011,a new deadline was set for the project March 1,2013. But the police are still in the trial stage.

In September 2011,trials were conducted in New Delhi district and 25 hand-held devices were rented from service provider Airtel.

Traffic police has plans to get nearly 1,200 devices at a rental of

Rs 110 per day for each device. Police have also stored in their database registration details of nearly 70 lakh vehicles.

A traffic police officer said the estimated cost of the project was pegged at Rs 15 crore for three years.

As the trials continue,there is constant communication between traffic police and the service provider every time police detect a flaw in the system or the device,they inform the service provider who corrects it. This has been going on for the past two years.

Police are also training head constables and zonal officers on how to use the device.

Special Commissioner of Police Traffic Taj Hasan said: The e-challan project is expected to start in the next few months. It had to be in place by March 1,2013,but supply of equipment was delayed.

Eye on the city

the public outrage over the December 16 gangrape incident prompted the Police Commissioner to put the city surveillance project on top of the agenda.

Round-the-clock surveillance of the city through CCTV cameras came into picture in 2010. A few cameras were installed in crowded markets,but the project picked up pace only after the December 16 incident.

The project was split into phases. Under the first phase,26 marketplaces and five border checkposts were brought under CCTV coverage.

The second phase for another 34 markets and 10 border checkposts should have been over by April,but is running late.

Police maintain that this phase is nearing completion.

Phase-III of the project will cover district courts,diplomatic areas and other sensitive zones,while Phase-IV will bring 475 other locations under surveillance.

The estimated cost of the project is said to be Rs 356 crore. A total of 12,000 CCTV cameras will be installed across the city by the end of the project.

The project is going on smoothly and without delay. A little delay is incidental. Otherwise,the project is in full swing and is nearing completion, a senior police officer said.

For now,police are concentrating on securing marketplaces and border checkposts,but arterial roads are still out of the CCTV ambit.

An audit conducted by the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure Planning and Engineering Centre and the traffic police identified the most vulnerable and unsafe parts of the city. The study found that most sexual assaults happened along deserted,unwatched places such as flyovers,signal-free corridors,subways,parks,parking lots and gated communities.

Connecting police stations

The Ministry of Home Affairs chalked out a plan in 2009 to link police stations across the country,enabling them to share important details on crimes and criminals.

The New Delhi district was to start connecting its police stations as part of the pilot project,and the work is at implementation stage.

Senior officers said the project is on course,but is taking time because of several tenders need to be floated at different stages.

The blueprint of police stations spanning 35 states and Union Territories was prepared in 2009,after the then Home Minister P Chidambaram told Director Generals of all states to fast-track the project.

Once complete,the crime and criminal tracking networking system CCTNS will bring together the data maintained individually by each police station. This will allow police personnel from any part of the country to access the history sheet of a criminal.

Police said Wipro was chosen to design the software for the project.

While the cost of the all-India project is estimated to be Rs 2,000 crore,the budget for Delhi Police is

Rs 30 crore. But when bidders were selected,the price for the project in Delhi came to around Rs 50 crore. There were a lot of negotiations and bids were opened more than once, a senior police officer said.

In Delhi,connectivity is not an issue. But there are places in Arunachal Pradesh or Andaman Islands where Internet connectivity is a rarity. At such places,BSNL and MTNL will be called to implement the project. This project will take a very long time to be fully functional across the country, the officer said.

Police sources said the CCTNS project in Delhi has been planned in three phases. By Phase-II,all police stations and special units in the 10 districts will be linked. The deadline for Phase-II is September 2013.

According to the proposal,the third phase is to get over by September 2014. Under this phase,the system will be linked with the other agencies and states.