When a nine-year-old girl was molested by her teacher in a Municipal Corporation of Delhi school in the winter of 2010, the civic body’s response was to announce a pilot project to install closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs) in some of its schools.

The aim was to prevent any such incidents in future and to keep a tab on the performance of the schools’ teaching staff. Mahender Nagpal, the then Chairman of the Education Committee, had said that cameras will be installed on a trial basis in 50-odd schools for a period of six months and schools that have more than 2000 students will be considered for the project.

A year later, in December 2011, Bhim Sain Bassi, Special Commissioner (Traffic), had written to the MCD to place all the civic body’s parking lots under CCTV surveillance. In the backdrop of terrorists targeting parking lots to carry out blasts in the Capital, the erstwhile unified MCD announced a pilot project in the parking facilities of two crowded markets -- Lajpat Nagar and Karol Bagh. The civic body planned to take up the other facilities in a phased manner at a later stage.

The civic body’s affinity in announcing CCTV installation when faced with adversities has remained “word of mouth” and has not even got to the stage of being put on paper. “While these projects are announced, their feasibility is not assessed and so many remain unimplemented,” observes a senior official (in-charge of all three Corporations). “When surveillance equipment is set up, manpower is also required to monitor it,” he adds.

“I do not know why the previous projects did not work out,” says North Delhi Municipal Corporation’s Education Committee Chairman Rekha Gupta. “But the plan now is to equip schools with adequate surveillance material. This is especially for the safety of girl children,” she says. “We already have biometric attendance for all MCD employees. Soon this too will be introduced in schools.”

Ms. Gupta says the corporate sector will be involved in providing schools with necessary equipment. “Through their Corporate Social Responsibility, corporate houses can fund the CCTV cameras. The principal can then monitor the whereabouts of the teaching staff and safety of the students.” “While maintenance will fall on the Corporation, no extra staff will be required to monitor the footage,” she adds.

Last month, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation decided that it will insist that sensors be installed by contractors to record the entry and exit of vehicles so as to check the number of vehicles parked in a day at a particular parking site. Addressing the Standing Committee, Municipal Commissioner P. K. Gupta had said that data was incomplete on the number of vehicles parked in each site costing the Corporation much needed revenue.

“Hand-held devices will be installed so as to monitor the number of cars that use the facility,” he says.

The erstwhile MCD, however, acknowledged that it did not possess the expertise of installing surveillance equipment and had invited private companies to fix video surveillance equipment in parking lots and other areas. For instance, the civic body awarded the contract for collecting tax in the city’s border to a private concessionaire.

According to records on the MCD’s website, PKSS Infrastructure Private Limited manages the 122 entry points into the city which includes toll collection and surveillance which monitors the number plates of the vehicles entering the city’s jurisdiction.

Two years ago, in the wake of two incidents of robbery at two toll collection centres, the contractors had demanded additional security but there was no talk of installing CCTVs to monitor these points. Of the cameras that are functional in Delhi’s borders, many point upwards or are placed too high to detect vehicles’ number plates.