Video of the crowd outside New Market being shot on Friday evening. Picture by Amit Datta

The civic body has installed 48 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in New Market as part of a plan to bring all municipal markets under electronic surveillance.

The bill so far is about Rs 20 lakh. Five more electronic eyes are to be installed outside the market.

The civic body owns 24 markets across the city. With terrorists striking in one city after another, police have advised the authorities to beef up security in all markets and keep a close watch on visitors and employees.

Other Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) properties to be equipped with CCTVs include the Gariahat, Lake, Allen, VIP and Lansdowne markets.

“All civic markets will be brought under CCTV surveillance in phases and monitored by trained employees of the CMC marketing department. The special branch of Calcutta police has already trained a group of employees of the department in electronic surveillance. The civic lighting department has been entrusted with the task of installing cameras under the supervision of the police,” said municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay.

The civic accounts department estimates the total cost of the project to be over Rs 2 crore. It’s an additional burden on the civic coffers, though Bandyopadhyay admitted that “there is no other option as it is a question of security”.

Senior officials of the civic market department, however, called the move an eyewash. “Until New Market traders are prevented from using their shops as godowns for hawkers’ wares at night and roadside parking around the market and the civic headquarters is prohibited, threats to security will remain,” one of them said.

According to the chief engineer (electrical) in the CMC, Pradip Jyoti Biswas, footage from the 48 cameras in New Market was being scanned during business hours on four monitors in the office of the market superintendent.

A CCTV camera’s range is 50 feet “in the line of sight”. More cameras are required for cavernous markets like the ones in the city, Biswas said.

The New Market project is being supervised by the special branch of city police. The officer-in-charge of New Market police station has been co-ordinating with the superintendent of the market for the security arrangement.