Indian Railways scraps tender for thermal cameras to avoid Chinese firms

Close on the heels of BSNL cancelling tender to 4G up-gradation project, Indian Railways also scrapped a bid for thermal cameras after vendors said the specifications may favour Chinese firms.

RailTel, a public sector undertaking in the Ministry of Railways last month floated a tender for 800 Artificial Intelligence-based surveillance cameras that measure body temperatures of individuals and even detect whether a person is wearing a mask or not.

However, vendors made a plea to RailTel that specifications in the tender favoured Chinese company Hikvision, one of the world’s largest video surveillance companies which currently dominates India’s CCTV market.

They said the technology—DeepInMind—which is part of the specification for the cameras and mentioned in the tender document, is a proprietary feature of Hikvision.

Now, RailTel has decided to float fresh tender which will encourage wider participation including non-Chinese companies as well as domestic companies.

Earlier the railways decided to cancel signalling contract given to Chinese companies in dedicated freight corridor.