MUMBAI: In a major step towards beefing up passenger safety, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) is set to install 7,035 CCTV cameras across 633 locations in the state to ensure digital surveillance of critical MSRTC infrastructure and prevent misuse of MSRTC buses by anti-social elements. The move comes in the wake of the Swargate case of last February when a young woman was raped inside a parked MSRTC bus at the Swargate bus depot in Pune.
Transport minister and MSRTC chairman Pratap Sarnaik, while announcing the project on Tuesday, said that given the potential threats from anti-social and extremist elements, the Maharashtra government had sanctioned a substantial allocation of ₹111 crore for the CCTV project. “CCTV’s will be installed at bus stands, depots, divisional workshops, central workshops, divisional offices and the Central Training Institute at Bhosari,” he said. Sarnaik added that the project was not merely about installing cameras but about providing a digital shield to the MSRTC’s security and reinforcing passengers’ trust.
The CCTVs will enable MSRTC to detect and respond to any suspicious activity immediately. The implementation will be done by Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL), a government-owned enterprise with extensive experience in telecom and surveillance infrastructure. TCIL was selected after an e-tendering process and has been given a timeline of one year.
During the pilot project phase, CCTV systems were successfully installed at 64 critical locations across Mumbai, Thane, Raigad and Palghar. A state-level central monitoring and control room has already been established in Mumbai and the User Acceptance Test (UAT) for the facility has been completed.