As part of the Smart Cities Mission and efforts to amp up surveillance in Bihar, the Bihar government is looking to deploy facial recognition system (FRS) connected with the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS) and other databases available with the police in Bhagalpur and Muzaffarpur. On April 13, the Telecommunications Consultants of India Limited (TCIL) issued a tender in this regard inviting bids from a single master system integrator company or a consortium of companies to set up an Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC), which apart from deploying FRS, also includes controlling public WiFi, smart street lights, installing CCTVs and so on. According to the tender, reviewed by MediaNama, around 1,500 and 400 CCTVs will be installed in Bhagalpur and Muzaffarpur, respectively. The tender notes that the facial recognition system should be able to detect attributes in real time from a CCTV camera or from a recorded video, photographs, or a sketch wherein skin colour, hair styles, texture of clothes can be altered. It is to be installed in public areas such as railway stations, bus stands, religious places, high security area and so on. An important part of this facial recognition drive of the Bihar government is to increase the police's surveillance capabilities. "The system shall be able to broadly match a suspect/criminal photograph with database created using photograph images available with passport, CCTNS and Prisons, State or National Automated Fingerprint Identification System or any other image database available with police/other identity," the tender read.…
