Set up 24-hour monitoring cells to curb sexual offences, SC tells police

1. At a Glance

• The Supreme Court told the Delhi Police to set up 24-hour monitoring cells that watch vulnerable areas without a break. The aim is to prevent sexual offences, not only to catch offenders afterwards. [1]
• The core point: CCTV cameras alone do little unless someone watches the feeds continuously from "war rooms" and police respond quickly. [1]
• The order came in a suo motu case about a series of sexual assaults on minors and women in Delhi-NCR. The court has said it intends to fix accountability on the authorities responsible for preventing crime. [1]
• For UPSC, this links to women's safety, police reform, judicial activism, the Nirbhaya Fund and the Safe City Projects, and federal policing in Delhi as a UT. [1][2][4]

2. Why in the News

• 5 October 2026 (Monday): A Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran directed the Delhi Police to set up 24-hour monitoring cells and step up patrolling. [1]
• Patrolling is to focus on educational institutions, colleges and public spaces, where "goons" reportedly harass young girl students. [1]
• The Bench pointed to "hundreds of illegal eateries" in the NCT of Delhi where anti-social elements gather and liquor is served, and told police to start identifying them. [1]
• Bench's words: "The cameras will help you in catching hold of the culprit, but how will you prevent such crimes? There has to be a 24-hour cell which keeps monitoring what is happening." [1]

3. Background & Evolution

• Nirbhaya Fund: the Union government's dedicated fund for women's safety projects. Many MHA initiatives are funded from it. [2][8]
• Safe City Project: a pilot designed under the Nirbhaya Fund projects. It aims to fill critical gaps so that metro cities can provide a safe environment for women. [2][3]
• MHA women-safety initiatives were launched together, including the Investigation Tracking System for Sexual Offences (ITSSO) and the Safe City Implementation Monitoring Portal. [5]
• Women Safety Division: a separate division in MHA that sensitises States/UTs on women's safety, including timely completion of investigations in sexual assault cases. [2][7]
• Cyber Crime Prevention against Women and Children (CCPWC): a scheme under the Nirbhaya Fund that extends women's safety work to cyberspace. [6]
• 2026: The SC takes up the Delhi-NCR assaults suo motu. It moves the focus from post-crime detection (CCTV-based identification) to real-time prevention (round-the-clock monitoring). [1]

4. Core Static Facts

5. Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Social / Gender

• Harassment near colleges limits girls' mobility and access to education. Safety in public spaces is a precondition for women taking part in public life. [1]
• Minors are among the victims, so the case also concerns child protection. [1]

Legal / Constitutional

• A suo motu case is an example of judicial activism: the court acts on its own when it sees systemic failures. [1]
• The court has said it intends to fix accountability on authorities entrusted with protecting vulnerable persons. This marks a shift from punishing offenders to holding institutions responsible. [1]

Administrative / Governance

• Gap between installing CCTV and actually monitoring it: infrastructure built without staffed command centres leaves cameras as a forensic tool only. [1]
• Safe City Projects already set aside money for hot-spot mapping and dense CCTV coverage. The SC direction pushes for these to be used actively. [4]
• Delhi Police comes under the MHA, so accountability lies with the Union government. Coordination across NCR jurisdictions is a further problem. [1][7]
• Illegal eateries point to failures in regulation and licensing that police alone cannot fix. [1]

Scientific / Technological

• The Safe City toolkit includes ANPR, drones and smart lighting. AI-based video analytics is the logical next step for 24×7 monitoring. [4]
• Wider surveillance raises privacy and proportionality questions (Puttaswamy-type tests). Data protection safeguards are needed.

Ethical

• Balance between preventive policing and civil liberties: continuous surveillance must not turn into moral policing of the people it is meant to protect.

6. Recent Developments (last 12-18 months)

• 5 Oct 2026: SC directs the Delhi Police to set up 24-hour monitoring cells, step up patrolling near educational institutions, and identify illegal eateries. [1]
• Earlier in the same suo motu case: the court said it intended to fix accountability on authorities responsible for crime prevention. [1]
• Ongoing: Safe City Projects in 8 cities, funded from the Nirbhaya Fund, are being implemented and monitored through the Safe City Implementation Monitoring Portal. [4][5]

7. Prelims Hooks

• The SC Bench that directed 24-hour monitoring cells for Delhi Police was Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran (Oct 2026). [1]
• The case is a suo motu proceeding on sexual assaults of minors and women in Delhi-NCR. [1]
• Safe City Projects run in 8 cities: Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai. [4]
• Total approved cost of the 8 Safe City Projects: ₹2,919.55 crore. [4][8]
• Safe City Projects are funded from the Nirbhaya Fund. [2][8]
• Safe City was designed as a pilot under the Nirbhaya Fund projects. [2]
• ITSSO stands for Investigation Tracking System for Sexual Offences. [5]
• The Women Safety Division sits in the Ministry of Home Affairs, not in the Ministry of Women and Child Development. [7]
• The CCPWC scheme (cyber crime against women and children) is funded under the Nirbhaya Fund. [6]
• Safe City features include ANPR (Automated Number Plate Reading) and drone surveillance. [4]
• Safe City includes women's toilets that can be located on Google Maps. [4]

8. More Cameras Than Anyone Is Watching

• Delhi already has a very large number of cameras
• In 2021 the Delhi government said 2.75 lakh CCTV cameras had been installed in the city, with 1.4 lakh more planned in a second phase [12].
• It also claimed Delhi has 1,826 cameras per square mile, about three times as many as Chennai and 11 times as many as Mumbai [12].

• So the gap the Supreme Court found is not a shortage of cameras. It is a shortage of people watching them and acting on what they see [1].

• The cameras and the police belong to two different governments

• In 2017, after eight years of effort, the Delhi Police had installed just over 4,000 cameras of its own [11].
• Most of the city's cameras came later, through the elected Delhi government's programme [12].
• The Delhi Police answers to the Union Home Ministry (MHA), not to the Delhi government [7].

• One authority owns the camera feeds and a different one has to send a patrol van. A 24-hour cell only works if the feed reaches the people who can respond. The court's order speaks only to the police [1].

• Lakhs of feeds cannot all be watched by people

• A "war room" can show only a small part of 2.75 lakh feeds at once [12].
• Without software that flags unusual activity, the cell can watch only selected hot-spots. That makes the Safe City hot-spot mapping the real basis for prevention, more than the camera count [4].

9. Why Money Was Never the Main Problem

• Funds were set aside but not spent
• A parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development (Chair: Dr. Satyanarayan Jatiya) reported in March 2020 [9].
• It found ₹7,436 crore set aside under the Nirbhaya Fund for 32 projects and schemes, but only ₹2,647 crore actually released to the bodies meant to carry them out [9].

• So the bottleneck is turning sanctioned money into working systems, not the size of the fund.

• The "pilot" never ended

• The Safe City Project began in 2018 as a three-year pilot (a small trial run) ending in 2021. It was later extended to 2024 [10].

• A trial that keeps running for six years produces no clear verdict on whether it worked, so it cannot be scaled up or fixed with confidence.

• Delhi has no cost-sharing excuse

• In other cities, Safe City costs are split 60:40 between the Union and the State [10].
• Delhi's project is fully funded by the Union government [10].
• So if Delhi's monitoring is weak, the cause is how the MHA and Delhi Police carried it out, not a State failing to pay its share.

10. Is the Court Now Running the Police?

• The strongest objection
• Deciding how many officers sit in a control room, and where patrols go, is daily administration. Under the separation of powers (each branch of government keeps to its own work), that belongs to the executive.

• A court cannot hire staff, approve budgets or check every night's patrol. If it issues directions it cannot supervise, it risks orders that look strong but change little on the ground.

• Why the objection is only partly right

• The court is not inventing a new policy. Safe City money was already approved for hot-spot mapping and CCTV, and Delhi's project is fully paid for by the Union [4][10].
• It is asking the executive to use what the executive already built [1].

• The court acted in a suo motu case (one it started on its own, without a petition) after repeated assaults on minors and women. It has framed its role as fixing accountability, not running patrols [1].

• What the objection gets right

• Staffing a 24-hour cell is an ongoing cost that the MHA has to budget for. A court order alone cannot fund it.
• The order also covers only Delhi Police, while the assaults happened across Delhi-NCR. Neighbouring NCR police forces answer to their own State governments, and the reported order does not reach them [1].

11. What Would Make the Order Actually Work

• MHA should set up the oversight Parliament already asked for
• The 2020 Standing Committee recommended that a committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary oversee Nirbhaya Fund projects [9].

• That body could make sure the Delhi government's camera network feeds directly into Delhi Police control rooms. This closes the gap between the two owners [11][12].

• The Supreme Court should ask for numbers, not promises

• In later hearings, the Bench can ask Delhi Police how many hours a day each cell is staffed, how many hot-spots are watched live, and how quickly patrols arrive after an alert.

• Without such figures, "fixing accountability" has nothing to measure against [1].

• MHA should publish Safe City progress

• The Safe City Implementation Monitoring Portal already exists [5].

• Releasing city-wise data from it would let courts, legislators and the public see whether money released has become working systems. That is the same gap the Standing Committee found [9].

• Prioritise watching hot-spots over adding cameras

• The Safe City design already maps crime hot-spots [4].
• Pointing staffed monitoring at those spots, such as college gates and the illegal eateries the Bench named, gives prevention more value than adding to the lakhs of cameras that no one watches [1][12].

12. Anchors for Answers

• Data: ₹7,436 crore set aside under the Nirbhaya Fund for 32 projects, but only ₹2,647 crore released (as of the 2020 report) [9]
• Data: Delhi government's 2021 claim of 2.75 lakh CCTV cameras installed, or 1,826 per square mile, three times Chennai and 11 times Mumbai [12]
• Report/Committee: Standing Committee on Human Resource Development, report on safety of women (Chair: Dr. Satyanarayan Jatiya), March 2020. It recommended Cabinet Secretary-level oversight of the Nirbhaya Fund [9]
• Law/Case: Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), right to privacy. This sets the test any 24-hour surveillance system must pass
• Scheme: Safe City Project, a 2018 pilot extended to 2024, with costs split 60:40 between the Union and States. Delhi's project is 100% Union-funded, which puts responsibility on the MHA [10]

13. Mains Relevance

• GS-I: Social empowerment; issues related to women.
• GS-II: Mechanisms, laws, institutions and bodies for the protection of vulnerable sections; role of the judiciary; government policies and interventions.
• GS-III: Internal security; role of technology in policing.
• GS-IV: Accountability of public servants; balancing surveillance and privacy.
• Possible question stems: 1. "CCTV cameras can help catch culprits but cannot by themselves prevent crime." In light of recent Supreme Court observations, examine how technology-driven policing for women's safety in Indian cities can be made more effective. (250 words) 2. Critically evaluate how well the Nirbhaya Fund and the Safe City Projects have made public spaces safer for women. (15 marks) 3. Is the Supreme Court's increasing use of suo motu jurisdiction in policing matters justified judicial activism or executive overreach? Discuss. (15 marks)

14. Related Topics to Study Next

• Nirbhaya Fund (use and under-utilisation): the funding source for Safe City and many women's safety schemes.
• Safe City Projects / Emergency Response Support System (ERSS-112): the existing technology and response setup for women's safety.
• POCSO Act, 2012: the legal framework for sexual offences against minors.
• Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: the new criminal law provisions on sexual offences.
• Police reforms (Prakash Singh case directions): accountability and modernisation of the police.
• Right to privacy (Puttaswamy) and DPDP Act, 2023: limits on mass CCTV surveillance.
• NCRB "Crime in India" data: trends in crimes against women and children.
• Status of Delhi (Art. 239AA): why the Delhi Police reports to the MHA.

15. NCERT Concepts to Revise

• Suo motu cognizance (Polity): The Supreme Court took up the Delhi-NCR sexual assault cases on its own, without any petition.
• Judicial activism (Polity): Directing Delhi Police to set up monitoring cells is the court pushing executive accountability beyond settling a dispute.
• Nirbhaya Fund (Polity): It pays for Safe City Projects and other women's safety schemes, including CCTV and hot-spot mapping.
• Accountability (Polity): The court says it will fix responsibility on the authorities charged with preventing crime.
• Prakash Singh case (Polity): These police reform directions cover accountability and modernisation, which the court's push for better policing relates to.
• Right to privacy (Polity): Round-the-clock surveillance raises Puttaswamy-style privacy and proportionality questions that Mains answers must balance.

16. Common Errors / Trap Areas

• Wrong ministry: the Women Safety Division and Safe City Projects belong to MHA, not the Ministry of Women and Child Development. [7][4]
• City count: there are 8 Safe City cities. Aspirants often add Pune or Jaipur or leave out Ahmedabad or Lucknow. [4]
• Confusing ITSSO with NDSO: ITSSO tracks investigations; the National Database on Sexual Offenders is a separate registry of offenders. [5]
• Not a statute: the 24-hour monitoring cell is a judicial direction to Delhi Police in a suo motu case, not a nationwide scheme or law. [1]
• Prevention vs detection: the SC's point is that CCTV mainly serves detection after the fact, and prevention needs real-time monitoring. Answers that treat CCTV as preventive by default miss this. [1]