The Capital’s hawk eye, high resolution PTZ camera, installed at 19th storey building at Palika Bhawan — the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) headquarters at Connaught Place — could not meet the expectations of the administration and failed to capture images/inputs regarding car bomb explosion in an Israeli diplomat’s car in a high security area on Monday.

The high resolution Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) camera was installed at NDMC headquarters in December last year to keep a bird’s eye on the public to ensure no suspicious movements and unauthorised constructions go unnoticed.

Top sources told The Pioneer that the control room of PTZ camera at the NDMC building failed to capture images on the terror strike at Israeli diplomat car at Aurangzeb Road in high security area. The officials claimed that when the incident took place the focus of the PTZ camera was not on Aurangzeb Road. “The Information Technology department will have to examine why it has failed to capture images on the terror attack and whether the location of the camera is appropriated,” said officials.

The Delhi Government has claimed that this PTZ camera is a first of its kind in the country, which can capture images within a radius of five km in clear weather and more than three km in foggy conditions has failed to provide any inputs. A special control room has been set up at NDMC building.

The total Budget is estimated at around Rs120 crore for this project and it is being implemented with the help of Survey of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Science and Technology and National Mapping Agency. The second PTZ camera has been installed at Police Headquarters, but it is not operational till date. The Government has planned to install 63 such cameras across the city.

The cameras, it is claimed, would also provide aerial and video photography for use by security agencies, would help create an integrated geospatial information system for surveillance and easy access by land use database, utility services and infrastructure departments. The PTZ camera uses Internet Protocol to transmit image data and control signals over a high speed Ethernet link. They are normally deployed together with a digital video recorder or network video recorder to form a video surveillance system.

Besides NDMC and Police Headquarters, the Delhi Government has also identified 18 other locations that include Police Headquarters, CBSE building, MCD’s civic centre building, Directorate of Health Services building, Fire Station building at Rohini, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute building, DDA building Vasant Kunj to install such cameras.

The project was conceived in January 2010 keeping the Commonwealth Games in view, but due to bureaucratic hurdles, the Government has succeeded in installing only one camera till date.