‘Safe city plan’ in B'luru as Centre grants Rs 667 cr

The BBMP is taking the first steps in creating a women-friendly city with high-resolution CCTV cameras, 100 police posts and a central control room among others planned across the city.

The plans follow the sanction of Rs 667 crore by the Central government under the ‘Nirbhaya Fund’ to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike towards women safety. The civic body plans to utilise it to implement the Centre’s ‘Safe city' project.

The issue was raised during the BBMP monthly council meeting on Friday after several corporators voiced their concerns city youngsters consuming addictive substances like ganja. It was one of the nuisances to residents, especially women, they said.

Padmanabha Reddy, the leader of the opposition party in the BBMP council, said that the approval from the central government to allocate funds was pending since February this year and Bengaluru was among the top cities to receive the maximum funds in the country. BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad said: "The central government has granted funds according to the requirement proposed by us. The project will be implemented in three years.”

The project includes installing 5,500 high-resolution cameras that can recognise face and will have an inbuilt artificial intelligence (AI) system, a central control room to monitor the activities of these cameras across the city, 100 police outposts near women’s colleges, safety islands in bus stands, which is the emergency response system, 300 four-wheelers and 1,000 two-wheelers for police officers in vulnerable locations.

While 60% of the funds will be given by the central government, 40% of funds will be from the state government for the implementation of the project. Meanwhile, a few corporators called on the BBMP to recover its unclaimed properties to add on to its assets.

Money spent on DPRs

Manjunath Reddy, former mayor and Congress leader, also said that an audit has to be done to find out how much money has been spent in preparing the detailed project reports (DPR) of various projects that have been undertaken by the BBMP.