Karnal Integrated Command & Control Centre not fully operational

Tribune News Service

Parveen Arora

Karnal, September 25

The Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC), an ambitious project of the Smart City Mission, is “not fully operational” even after over nine months of being inaugurated on December 5, 2021 by the Chief Minister, Manohar Lal Khattar.

Other components to start soon

At present, several components are working and the remaining will start working soon. The monitoring of LED lights, water supply, the GPS monitoring of garbage vehicles and others will be initiated soon. Anish Yadav, DC-Cum-CEO, Karnal smart city ltd

Project worth Rs 152 crore

The KSCL has hired an agency –Madras Security Pvt Ltd — to set up this project at the cost of around Rs 152 crore, of which Rs 110 crore was the implementation cost, while the remaining Rs 42 crore is the five-year maintenance cost.

Earlier, it was claimed that it would act as a “nerve centre” for operations, management, day-to-day monitoring of traffic, disaster management and strengthening safety and security in the city. The CM had also claimed that this project would interlink all departments of public utility, but so far, this has not been done.

As per information, the project is not working fully on “go live” mode as the documentation work with the Union Government has not been completed.

As per sources, at the time when the project was launched, it was claimed that all departments providing basic amenities and emergency services, including the police, fire, HSVP, Karnal Municipal Corporation (KMC), UHBVN, Public Health and others would be inter-linked, but due to software issues, this could not be done. Around 25,000 streetlights are being installed, but are not linked to this centre, while the water supply project, SCADA, is yet to start. “Due to the software issue, these departments have not been linked so far,” said an official.

The KSCL has hired an agency — Madras Security Pvt Ltd — to set up this project at the cost of around Rs 152 crore, of which Rs 110 crore was the implementation cost comprising the machinery, field infrastructure, server and other equipment, while the remaining Rs 42 crore is the five-year maintenance cost.

At present, this project is mainly being used to manage the traffic system and issuing challans. The work of issuing the challans was to be done automatically, but most of the work is being done manually, said the sources.

As many as 536 CCTV cameras have been installed at 63 points, including 29 major junctions. Besides, 36 display boards and 35 emergency call boxes were installed in different parts of the city. As per the authorities, people are still not aware of these emergency call boxes, which were installed to facilitate people in any emergency such as snatching, loot, or any other incidents. Out of the 29 traffic-light junctions, only five are working on the auto-analyzer mode, while 12 are on the blinking mode and the remaining are on the fixed timing mode. The sources said the facial recognition system had not become operational so far at this centre.

Anish Yadav, Deputy Commissioner-cum-CEO, Karnal Smart City Ltd (KSCL), said he had pushed the agency to work on all components, which were assured. “Several components are working at present and the remaining will start working soon,” said the CEO. He said the Police Department had been inter-linked with the centre and soon the monitoring of LED lights, water supply, the GPS monitoring of garbage vehicles and others would be added.

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