Safe City project to be handed over to Lko police

HT'S MARCH 23 GROUND REPORT FOUND THAT AFTER 8 PM NO STAFF WAS PRESENT TO MONITOR 1600 CCTV CAMERAS INSTALLED UNDER THE INITIATIVE

- Animesh Mishra

LUCKNOW: Following multiple trials, formalities are now ongoing to hand over the Safe City project to police for its full-scale functioning. Inderjit Singh, Lucknow municipal commissioner and chief executive officer (CEO) of Smart City, confirmed that several rounds of trials have been conducted and the process of transferring the surveillance project to the police is in progress.

According to a Smart City official, the Safe City project was launched in 2022, but the trials began in 2024 across various aspects, including the functioning of AI-enabled cameras in capturing real incidents and flagging fake incidents in real time, along with aspects related to video analytics and AI systems.

Earlier on March 23, 2025, Hindustan Times had exposed serious night-time monitoring lapses at the Safe City Control Centre.

Authorities have now initiated the process to hand over the entire surveillance project to the Lucknow police for round-the-clock functioning.