No CCTV at 2,701 police stations, 628 without land lines IV News

Home Minister Nityanand Rai said that all states and UTs have been advised to take appropriate steps to upgrade infrastructure. “Crime and Criminal Surveillance Network and System (CCTNS) has been deployed in 16,592 police stations across the country as on March 1 this year,” Rai said.

Sharing information about police stations without CCTV cameras, Rai said out of 17,535 police stations, only 14,834 have CCTV cameras. “In Tamil Nadu, there are 2,292 police stations and 714 do not have CCTV cameras; while 505 out of 1,168 police stations in Maharashtra do not have CCTV cameras. In Jharkhand, the number of police stations without CCTVs is 438 (out of 564), while 428 out of 1,027 stations in Andhra Pradesh lacked CCTVs,” Rai said.

The number of computers in police stations in states is 1,72,168, he added.
Sharing the details of the funds allocated and released by the central government under “assistance to states and ICT for police modernisation” in the last three years, Rai said the better performance incentive being given till 2019-20 has been discontinued as the new guidelines allowing the release of 25 percent installment amount if the unutilized balance of the state or UT is below 25 percent of the allocation.

“In 2019-20, the central government had allocated Rs 811.30 crore and released Rs 781.12 crore, along with better performance incentives of Rs 120.09 crore, but they [states/UTs] used only 510,495 million ISK. In 2020-21, the Center had allocated Rs 770.76 crore and released Rs 103.25 crore, while in 2021-22, Rs 620.45 crore was allocated and Rs 158.57 crore was released. In 2022-23, the allocation was Rs 620.45 crore, of which Rs 103.58 crore was available,” Rai said.

“… Out of the released central funds under the scheme, an amount of Rs 640.35 crore is unspent with the state governments,” he added.