The Delhi Police have taken a significant stride in advancing public safety and traffic enforcement with the installation of 535 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) software at various locations across the city. The systems developed by Vehant Technologies, are deployed in strategic areas identified through crime mapping, said the company.

The implementation includes locations within the jurisdiction of police stations like Patparganj PS, Kalyanpuri PS, Dwarka Sector 23 PS, and Sultanpuri PS. The integration of the ANPR system with police station control rooms has improved the efficiency of traffic surveillance. The system analyses video streams, recognising and capturing vehicle number plates, and relaying this information to the control room server for storage in the database. The security personnel then checks these number plates against the criteria set by the police station authorities. This includes monitoring for hot-listed, stolen, suspected, and barred vehicles, thereby strengthening the city surveillance solution.

Vehant Technologies, incubated at IIT Delhi, is overseeing the installation of the ANPR software licenses on a total of 535 cameras. To date, 53 software licenses have been deployed at Patparganj PS, Kalyanpuri PS, Dwarka Sector 23 PS, and Sultanpuri PS, with the remaining installations set to be completed shortly.

The software license deployments till now are: Kalyanpuri PS – 27 licenses; Dwarka Sector 23 PS- 16 licenses; Patparganj PS- 6 licenses and Sultanpuri PS- 4 licenses.

The ANPR system is based on real-time optical character recognition technology and automates the process of identifying and tracking vehicles by recognising their number plates. “It simplifies the task for security personnel in identifying stolen, suspected, hot-listed, and wanted vehicles,” said Shailendra Singh, Head- Smart & safe city Business, Vehant Technologies.

The company informed that the captured data by the ANPR system is encrypted and transferred to a centralised server at the Police Stations' control room. The 24×7 operation of the system records the number plate information of all captured vehicles in its database. With this information at hand, the security personnel at the control room can swiftly identify offending vehicles and take appropriate law enforcement action.

The company stressed that the system also holds future potential for detecting traffic rule violations such as wrong-way driving, triple riding, driving without a helmet, and mobile phone usage while driving.