Indian Railways and its PSU RailTel have installed IP based Video Surveillance (CCTV), cameras at 813 major Railway stations across country, giving a major boost to 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, 756 stations are targeted to be completed by Railways and RailTel.
It is a project covering all A1, A, B, C, D and E category railway stations and around 5000 stations are being executed by RailTel. Indian Railways signed a MoU with RailTel on 25.6.2020 for installing CCTV at Stations. In order to promote domestic manufacturing, address national security concerns, clause for audit of complete system by CERT-IN empaneled government agencies and prevent participation of countries sharing land border with India, broad based, robust revised specifications were issued by Indian Railways and based on the same RailTel has floated 4 tenders in May’21 for CCTV at 456 stations.
These CCTVs are being networked on optical fiber 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 level. 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 work of setting up centralized control room at 14 zonal Railways and work at balance are in progress. These centralized control room 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, Server, UPS and Switches which can be viewed from any web browser by authorized personnel.
4 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 form CCTV cameras will be stored for 30 days.
The work was hampered partially due to covid 19 pandemic lockdown, restrictive supply of material and restrictions on movement. However, with things coming back to normal, the project is now being executed smoothly.
