813 Major Railway Stations Across India Now Have IP Based Video Surveillance System

• Project is being executed by Indian Railways and RailTel
• Work of providing CCTV is in progress at 47 more stations

Indian Railways and its PSU RailTel have installed IP based video surveillance (CCTV) cameras at 813 major Railway stations across India giving a major boost to the safety and security of passengers, especially women and children. The work is in progress at 47 more stations and will be completed soon. By March 2022, Railways and Rail Tel has set a target to complete the installation of the CCTV in 756 stations.

It is a project covering all A1, A, B, C, D and E category railway stations. RailTel is executing the project in around 5000 stations. Indian Railways signed an MoU with RailTel on June 25, 2020 for installing CCTV at stations. In order to promote domestic manufacturing, address national security concerns, clause for audit of the complete system by CERT-IN empanelled government agencies and prevent the participation of countries sharing a land border with India, Indian Railways issued broad-based, robust revised specifications and based on the same RailTel has floated four tenders in May 21 for CCTV at 456 stations.

813 Major Railway Stations In India Are Now Under VSS

These CCTVs are being networked on optical fibre cable and the video feed of the CCTV cameras is being displayed not only at local RPF posts but also at a centralized CCTV control room at divisional and zonal levels. The CCTV cameras of stations and video feeds are being monitored at 3 levels to ensure enhanced safety and security at Railway premises. 

RailTel has completed the work of setting up a centralized control room at 14 zonal railways and work at balance are in progress. These centralized control rooms are displaying video feeds from CCTV installed by RailTel at stations of respective zones. Network Management System (NMS) has been also been provided for monitoring of cameras, servers, UPS and switches which can be viewed from any web browser by authorized personnel. 

Four types of IP cameras (dome type, bullet types, pan tilt zoom type and ultra HD - 4k) are being installed to ensure maximum coverage inside the Railway premises.  This will give an extra edge to the RPF officials to improve security. The recording of the video feeds from CCTV cameras will be stored for 30 days.

In SWR, installation of cameras has been done at Shivamogga, Hassan, Davanagere, Bangarpet, Kengeri, Bengaluru Cantonment, Satya Sai Prashanti Nilayam, Hubballi, Vasco da Gama, Hosapete, Belagavi and Ballari stations. The process of the system is under process at Gadag, Vijaypura and Mysuru stations and installation will happen shortly. A total of 340 cameras at a cost of Rs 8.17 crore have been installed so far. 

The integrated command and control centre and IP based surveillance system will help in providing better security to passengers, especially the women passengers. The IVSS system of surveillance has been adopted in all major stations/junctions of SWR, to prevent criminal activities. It will enable quick and coordinated action from RPF/police and also assist them in crowd management and crowd control.