CCTV cameras to be must at city homes soon: Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma

GUWAHATI: Assam will soon bring a legislation that will make installation of closed-circuit television cameras by residents in their homes and in apartments compulsory in the city as an effective tool to help police detect crime similar to the system in Hyderabad.“CCTVs may not prevent crimes but can act as a deterrant and certainly would help in detecting crimes,” CM Himanta Biswa Sarma said after reviewing the city’s crime situation at the police headquarters here on Wednesday.“We will soon bring a legislation. It will be mandatory for all apartment builders to fit CCTVs in apartments. Homes where aged parents live alone and their children live elsewhere must have CCTVs installed at their homes. Working parents who keep their kids with caretakers alone at home also have to install CCTVs at their homes. Government offices and other business establishments having five or more employees also have to have CCTVs facing the road,” Sarma said. People have to register their CCTVs with the police along with the GPS location of the installed sites.“While detecting crime, police cannot demand scanning the footages in these cameras set up in homes. We do not want to invade into people’s privacy. Police have to first serve a legal notice asking for seeing footages for detecting a crime. These CCTVs should have data storage capacity of at least 30 days,” Sarma said.The government also intends to install CCTVs across the city and the project is expected be completed before Durga Puja next year. “If government and citizens join hands, we can have 50,000 CCTvs in the city in no time,” he said, adding, “This model is already in use in Hyderabad where there are more than four lakh CCTVs.”A second review meeting with the police also decided that family members of police personnel killed in terror attacks will be given government jobs. The review meeting also decided to upgrade the 112 emergency response system in the state and 20 services by the police easily accessible like police verification through applications and portals, eFIR filing and e-application for seeking permission to hold meetings.