Consider designing portal to register NCC personnel as ‘Park Prahari’: Centre to Delhi Police

A month after a 17-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped at South Delhi’s Astha Kunj Park, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), during a high-level meeting on Thursday, asked Delhi Police Commissioner Anurag Kumar to consider designing an online portal through which National Cadet Corps (NCC) personnel can be registered as ‘Park Prahari’ on a designated platform — a move aimed at enhancing surveillance of public parks across the Capital.

The MHA said the current status of CCTV cameras at the parks and the installation of new ones through agencies such as C-DAC and BISAG-N should be examined and completed by November.

C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) and BISAG-N (Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics) are two of India’s premier autonomous scientific societies operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The Indian Express had earlier reported that the portion of the park where the incident of gangrape took place had no security guard, police patrolling vans or CCTV cameras and that several cameras at the gates were non-functional.

“After the meeting, police officers have started considering their utility so that these cadets could be posted at parks for a certain duration or peak hours in the evening. The Delhi Police will fund their salary. As of now, a blueprint is being made,” an officer said.

At Thursday’s meeting, the MHA also said that a security audit of public parks across the city should be conducted. Police and civic agencies have also been asked to fix CCTV, lights and gaps in the boundary of the parks by the end of the year.

Earlier this month, officials were asked to review the security of public parks in Delhi following a meeting chaired by Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan.

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The MHA has set a deadline of December 2026 for completing the construction and repair of boundary walls and fencing around parks, again to be executed by the park-owning or land-owning agencies, an officer said.

“All stakeholders have been told that every park spread over an area larger than one acre and which does not fall within a residential or perimeter-secured zone should have security guards at all entry and exit points round the clock. Each park will also have one guard each on patrol duty,” a senior officer said.

The MHA also said that entry and exit points of the parks be rationalised as required – a step that park-owning agencies must implement. “Parks falling under the Delhi Ridge have also been brought within the ambit of the directions, with the Delhi government and the Delhi Development Authority asked to ensure the arrangements,” the officer added.

The agency responsible for the park – either the landowning agency or the civic body concerned – has been made accountable for compliance. “The MHA has also mandated that lighting at these parks be brought in line with Indian Roads Congress (IRC) and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) norms, with the park-owning agency executing the work,” the officer said.

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The meeting on Thursday was attended by senior officials from the MHA, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Central Public Works Department, the Delhi government, the New Delhi Municipal Council, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Delhi Police, and the Delhi Development Authority.