December is the follow-up month at TNM where we go back to headlines of the past for a status update. In this series, we strive to bring focus back to promises made by governments, revisit official investigations that should have been completed by now and exhume issues of public interest that lost steam over time.
Six years after panic buttons were installed and CCTV cameras became compulsory for all public buses in India, the state-owned buses in Madurai seem to have none of it, according to the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) Madurai. While responding to a Right To Information (RTI) petition filed by M. Kasimayan, a social activist, the TNSTC Madurai has responded that it is currently undertaking measures to install CCTV cameras in the buses.
At present, 1,004 operational buses are controlled by the TNSTC in Madurai. However, none of them have CCTV cameras installed in them to ensure the safety of women and children. The funds for the installation was to be utilised from the Nirbhaya fund.
The state was allocated Rs. 425.06 crore as Nirbhaya Fund in 2018, out of which 60 per cent and 40 per cent were borne by the Union government and state government respectively. As of April 2021, the state had admitted to the Madras High Court that it had only utilised 10.7 per cent of the fund for ensuring the safety of women and children.
In 2016, Nitin Gadkari, the then Road Transport and Highways and Minister of Shipping, announced, “To ensure safety of women after the unfortunate Nirbhaya incident, we have decided to make it mandatory for public transport buses to install emergency panic buttons. CCTV cameras and GPS-enabled vehicle tracking devices.”
According to the proposed notification in 2016, buses with a seating capacity of over 23, should have CCTV cameras connected to the local police control room where they can be monitored. The emergency button should transfer the information to the closest police station using a GPS enabled tracking system that can then display live footage from that bus at the central control room.
In line with the proposal made by the centre, Chief Minister M K Stalin launched 500 buses in Tamil Nadu with CCTV cameras and panic buttons in May 2022. While the launch reportedly happened across the state, Madurai’s buses remain ignored. In addition to the launch, 31 bus depots and 35 bus terminuses of Metropolitan Transport Corporation (Chennai) were also connected to the centre for surveillance under the Nirbhaya safe city project.