In recent years, India has witnessed a troubling trend of surveillance infrastructure expansion, often under the guise of welfare, good governance, security and tax enforcement. The recent proposal to allow the Income Tax (I-T) Department to access emails, social media accounts, and other personal details to detect tax fraud, marks a significant escalation in this trend. This development, however, is not an isolated policy shift. It echoes a long-standing pattern of unchecked surveillance practices that have been quietly tested in places like Telangana, particularly by the Hyderabad Police, before being adopted at the national level.
Hyderabad has long been a hub for surveillance experimentation, earning the dubious distinction of being one of the most surveilled cities globally. As per media reports, in 2021, the city boasted 36.52 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people, a figure proudly announced by then-Telangana DGP Mahendar Reddy. But the city’s surveillance infrastructure goes far beyond CCTV cameras. The Hyderabad Police, under the pretext of “smart policing,” developed systems like Samagra Vedika - Integrated People Information Hub (IPIH), which mined data from phone records, cell tower analysis, utility connections, tax payments, voter IDs, and even criminal records to create a 360 degree profiles of citizens, often without their knowledge or consent.
Telangana’s 360 degree surveillance has its origins in experiments by the I-T Department, a pilot project that began in 2006 and was later adopted by the department in 2009. GT Venkateshwar Rao, an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer involved in the pilot project, later implemented the idea of 360 degree surveillance in Telangana through the IPIH with applications in welfare, taxation and policing.
The targeted policing of the population went beyond the passive data collection of citizenry using state surveys. The Hyderabad Police engaged in active surveillance, including illegal cordon-and-search operations targeting low-income and marginalised communities, profiling people using TS-Cop App, and even searching phones without legal authorisation. While such operations, often justified as confidence-building measures, were criticised as human rights violations by various organisations and communities internationally. All these applications of surveillance follow the principles of 360 degree profiling, which is a feature across policing, taxation and the National Population Register (NPR).
Tracking of history sheeters and tax offenders using Whatsapp, Instagram & Google Maps
The Hyderabad police under its targeted policing practices, forced history sheeters to share their live locations on Whatsapp and show their messages on Whatsapp and Instagram. This practice was particularly employed against people with a history of crime who were seen as a threat to social stability by the local police.
It is not a mere coincidence that the practices evolved by the Income Tax department have spread to policing, welfare and governance. But now, after finetuning these practices by experimenting on the marginalised in our society, they are going mainstream. The Union Finance Minister’s statement in Parliament, defending the I-T Department’s new powers under the Income Tax Bill 2025, mirrors the unchecked surveillance practices pioneered in Hyderabad.
Introduced on February 13, 2025, the Bill if passed will replace the I-T Act 1961. One of the provisions in the Bill grants tax authorities unprecedented access to “virtual digital spaces” including emails, social media accounts, bank records, and trading transactions without a warrant or prior notice, based solely on suspicion of tax evasion. It also allows tax officers to bypass security measures and access protected digital platforms, a provision that has sparked criticism for its potential to erode privacy and enable misuse.
The parallels between Telangana’s surveillance systems and the proposed tax law are striking. Just as the Hyderabad Police linked databases from various government departments such as utility records, welfare schemes, property ownership, birth and death records, voter IDs, and tax payments to create 360 degree citizen profiles, the Income Tax Bill seeks to integrate and access personal data across digital platforms. The Telangana experiment, which operated without legal backing or public consent, has effectively been scaled up to the national level, now cloaked in the legitimacy of tax enforcement. The Union Finance Minister’s justification that such access is necessary to compute tax evasion and gather evidence echoes the Hyderabad Police’s rationale of “smart policing” to justify their actions.
The Telangana model of surveillance has not remained confined to Hyderabad. Other states have adopted similar systems, often inspired by Hyderabad’s “success” in implementing mass surveillance under the guise of public safety. For instance, the Telangana Police’s model of interconnected 360 degree CCTV program, is now being implemented in New Delhi. The Union government’s own initiatives, such as the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) and the Centralised Monitoring System (CMS), amplify these efforts by enabling real-time data collation from 21 key organisations, including the Income Tax Department and the National Crime Records Bureau.
The Income Tax Bill 2025 is a culmination of these trends, formalising and expanding the surveillance practices that were once covert and localised. The Bill’s provisions align with the government’s broader push for digital integration, as seen in initiatives like the Digital India program, which, while aimed at improving governance, has also facilitated the creation of vast databases that can be exploited for surveillance. The lack of a comprehensive data protection law in India—despite the Puttaswamy judgment calling for one—exacerbates these risks, leaving citizens vulnerable to state overreach.
There is a pattern of spreading of the 360 degree model, with several databases all being interconnected. This model is visible and complete in Telangana, while the rest of India is playing catch up. The equivalent of National Population Register (NPR) has been built in Telangana with Integrated People Information Hub/ Samagraha Vedika, with no legal backing whatsoever, resulting in formation of an extreme control state.
The surveillance of A Revanth Reddy when he was an Opposition leader offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked surveillance. The usage of state resources for surveillance to target political leaders, social activists, dalit activists, students activists, lawyers and even judges demonstrates how such systems can be weaponised to suppress dissent and consolidate power. The Income Tax Bill 2025 raises similar concerns. Opposition leaders and civil rights groups warn that the law could be used to target critics of the government, intimidate businesses, and settle political scores. The vague definition of “undisclosed income,” which now includes cryptocurrencies without a clear regulatory framework, further increases the risk of arbitrary enforcement.
Moreover, the Bill’s implications extend beyond tax enforcement. Often raids by I-T officials against politicians and politically exposed persons are followed by Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids, as the details are shared. It is not just politicians, but also businessmen like TV Mohandas Pai, who are opposing these provisions, linking it to tax terrorism. The law, however noble without the safeguards, will be misused in the Indian context, especially ending up targeting the minority communities.
The idea of digital public infrastructure and the digitisation of government services and public records by the Government of India, along with almost all states, are being projected as a step towards transparency, good governance, and timely delivery of services. But in reality, it has led to the creation of massive infrastructures that make it easier for the government to snoop on people. Take the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023, for example. It was supposed to protect our data, but instead, it has given government agencies a free hand to store, process, and use our personal information for vaguely defined “public interest” reasons. The DPDP Act does very little to prevent the misuse of data by the government agencies.
The trajectory from Telangana’s illegal surveillance systems to the Income Tax Bill 2025 underscores the urgent need for legal safeguards to protect citizens’ privacy. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) v. Union of India (1997) case established guidelines for lawful interception, requiring strict oversight and necessity-based justification. However, both the Telangana police and the new tax law flout these principles, operating with minimal accountability.
The Samagra Vedika project is a classic example of how government agencies take advantage of such loopholes to build large-scale digital surveillance infrastructure systems without any accountability. The misuse of these systems is not limited to specific political parties in power, with the state and its machinery remaining the same. There is a need to push back against such projects creating digital infrastructure by linking different databases and platforms across India with more focus on fundamental rights beyond right to privacy.
(Author is a social activist based in Hyderabad)