Motorcycles parked inside the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation compound. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, July 12: The municipal corporation will install closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras on its ground and inside the office to keep a tab on vehicle lifters, office employees and visitors.

Six motorcycle thefts were reported from the corporation office premises last month and a couple of two-wheelers have already been stolen from the same place this month.

Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner Sanjib Kumar Mishra said: “We have decided to install CCTV cameras at vital locations including the parking area on both the sides of the office, main entrance, important chambers, all corridors and major sections so that we can keep a tab on the entry of visitors to the office.”

Mishra said the centralised monitoring of the CCTV footage can also help check allegations of corruption because everything other than the toilets would be under the surveillance mechanism.

The installations of CCTV cameras will cost around Rs 7 lakh. “The trend of two-wheeler theft makes it apparent that the thieves might also be getting help from insiders,’’ said a senior BMC official.

Prashant Ranjan Jethi, an employee associated with the municipal commissioner’s office, lost his two-wheeler on June 27. Two more motorcycles were stolen from the campus on July 2 and July 8.

While the two-wheeler stolen on July 2 belonged to an outsider, the second two-wheeler was of a junior BMC engineer. On July 3, The Telegraph had published a report titled ‘Thieves lurk at parking lots’ highlighting the risks of parking vehicles at major government establishments in the city. Interestingly, the theft of vehicles from the BMC campus also brings to light how the centrally-located office space is being used by office-goers as their personal parking space. “We often notice-office goers travelling to Cuttack or Puri parking their two-wheelers here and walking down to the nearby Kalpana Square to catch buses to their destinations. They collect their motorcycles on the way home,’’ said a BMC employee.

Additional commissioner of BMC Krushna Prasad Pati said: “In near future, we will also implement a mechanism to check the identity of individuals so that their purpose of visit is known to our security personnel.”

Last month, a motorcycle, which was stolen from the adjacent campus of the State Urban Development Agency (SUDA), was found lying unattended at the BMC parking lot. The SUDA employee got to know about it a week after purchasing a new one. In another case, a two-wheeler was seen parked at a particular place on the BMC campus for three months. When BMC employees started noticing this bike and discussing the theft case, its owner removed it on the first week of July. The two-wheeler belonged to the owner of a shop near BMC Square.