The 739-acre Manasagangotri in the core of Mysuru will never be the same with the impressive and expansive campus of the century-old University of Mysore being brought under 24x7 camera surveillance.
Possibly, by Independence Day, 700-plus high-definition cameras will start guarding one of the largest campuses among the State universities with personnel keeping track of the footage round-the-clock in a centralised location.
“This is perhaps the largest area coming under camera surveillance among the public universities. The idea is the safety of students and the campus which is located amidst the city. Our effort is likely to help in safeguarding every part of the campus with abundant tree cover,” said Vice-Chancellor G. Hemantha Kumar.
Already, 200-plus cameras have been installed and 500 more are expected to be installed by the end of this month or early next month. The control room with multiple television monitors for tracking visuals from each camera is getting ready. The University is hoping to launch the camera surveillance of Manasagangotri before Independence Day.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed this project which was actually planned for a launch in March/April. The lockdown and subsequent travel restrictions delayed the supply of cameras. The work has picked up pace now with the cabling network and fixing underway across the campus.
Poles had been put up wherever necessary at vantage points, main campus roads, departments, hostels and other properties for fixing the cameras with night vision.
The University officials, after a deliberation, felt the need for equipping the campus with camera surveillance with a centralised control room and dedicated staff monitoring the footage despite having private security guards and patrol teams going around the campus in the night.
With 63 PG departments offering 76 postgraduate programmes, the university has more than 1.20 lakh UG, PG, M.Phil, and Ph.D. students and a large chunk of students are part of the Mysuru campus.
The campus was being used as a thoroughfare by goods-laden trucks and other heavy vehicles for commuting to areas abutting the campus or the major roads.
Collecting information on how top university campuses have secured their campus, the University, which was giving free access to vehicles round-the-clock, constructed large gates deploying security at key locations as the first step towards securing the campus.
The gates were closed in the evening with entry only to the students and the staff. Sometime ago, it restricted private vehicles into the campus unless it was connected to the university work and deployed a couple of battery-operated vehicles for ferrying visitors, who were supposed to park their vehicles outside the gates.
Prof. Kumar said highly refined cameras available in the markets are being installed with the work handed over to an agency whose men are on the job since the last few days to complete the task soon.
By the time the universities get the ‘green’ signal to resume classes, it wants to get the pending works, especially the camera surveillance, done.
