IP-based Video Surveillance System installed at 813 major Railway stations to ensure safety, security
Jul 06, 2021
By Nishant Ketu
New Delhi [India], July 7 : To provide a major boost to the safety and security of passengers, especially women and children, Indian Railways and its PSU RailTel have installed IP based Video Surveillance System (VSS) at 813 major Railway stations across the country.
By March 2022, 756 stations are targeted to be completed by Railways and RailTel. In addition, the work is in progress at 47 more stations and will be completed soon.
According to a release by 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.
The main aim of this project is to provide safety and security to the passengers. To implement this project, Indian Railways signed an MoU with RailTel on June 25 2020.
Also, 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, broad-based, robust revised specifications were issued by Indian Railways and based on these issues, RailTel has floated 4 tenders in May'21 for CCTV at 456 stations.
The specifications of this project, all CCTVs are being networked on optical fibre networking and the video feed of the CCTV cameras are being displayed not only at local RPF posts but also at a centralized CCTV control room at divisional and zonal offices.
The CCTV cameras of stations and video feeds are being monitored at 3 levels to ensure enhanced safety and security at Railway premises.
Despite the COVID pandemic, RailTel has already completed the work of setting up a centralized control room at 14 zonal Railways. 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, Server, UPS and Switches which can be viewed from any web browser by authorized personnel.
It is worth mentioning that 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.
It is notable that RailTel a "Mini Ratna (Category-I)" Central Public Sector Enterprise, is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning a Pan-India optic fibre network covering several towns & cities and rural areas of the country. Along with a strong a reliable network of 59500+ RKM of Optic fibre, RailTel has two-tier III data centers as well.
RailTel is also working with the Indian Railways to transform railway stations into digital hubs by providing public Wi-Fi at railway stations across the country.
