State-Dominated Technological Surveillance in India: Policies of Delhi and Telangana Governments on CCTVs

• RAKSHIT KWEERA

  University of Hyderabad

India is an emerging player in the study of CCTV surveillance in the Global South. The penetration of technological surveillance has increased manifold in the last decade, and this is mainly led by the state machinery in India. The government at the centre, i.e., the union government and various provincial governments within their jurisdiction, have passed laws and brought policies in this regard. The two provinces in India that stand out in terms of the use of surveillance for security are Delhi and Telangana. This is evident from the fact that Delhi and Hyderabad emerge as the most surveilled cities in the world in many reports. The police in these provinces are highly reliant on the use of CCTV cameras for security, and they have detailed laws and policies for surveillance. While charting out the laws and policies of the Telangana and Delhi governments on the use of CCTV surveillance, I will also map various stakeholders involved within the state institutions in this process, how the state dominates surveillance, and how the public has to comply with it.

• PDF

Copyright (c) 2025 Journal of Polity and Society

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.