At a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi government’s cabinet passed the Education Department’s proposal for administrative approval and expenditure sanction for installing CCTV cameras in government schools. The cabinet also renamed the school management committees (SMCs), which will now be known as Vidyalaya Kalyan Samitis.
The Expenditure Finance Committee had earlier approved the ₹597 crore project to install 1.46 lakh cameras in schools, including inside classrooms in May 2018. The cameras will cover classrooms, corridors, laboratories, libraries, vacant rooms, parking lots and areas outside washrooms.
The government’s decision to install cameras in schools comes in the wake of a spate of attacks on children inside institutes across the NCR in the past year. In July, the Cabinet had earlier approved a project to install 1.4 lakh cameras in Delhi’s residential colonies and markets July 2018.
In order to map the city for infrastructural problems, a proposal by the Women and Child Development Department to conduct a survey with the NGO SafetiPin was approved by the Cabinet.
The new survey will ascertain the level of safety for women in public spaces, and hikes in assistance to Residents’ Welfare Associations (RWAs) and leprosy patients were among the proposals.