Acknowledging the need of increased security in the Indian cities, home minister P. Chidambaram said India will take help from United States and Britain to improve urban policing.

“We are now trying to work with New York and London to improve urban policing in India. We are trying to borrow ideas so that quality of policing improves in India,” Chidambaram said at the release of CII’s white paper on ‘Safe City’ on Wednesday in New Delhi.

He also stressed the need of the increased vigilance to make Indian cities more secure from terror threat. “All cities around the world are on terror target. No one is really safe and secure,” he said.

Making a city like Delhi a 'safe city', however will take several years and huge investments, the minister admitted. 

“That is the price paid for living in and securing the cities,” the Home Minister added.

In response, CII stressed the need for public private partnership (PPP) model for safe city to curb threats to security. “This would mean involving technology solution providers, consultants and system integrators work in close partnership with government to solve security needs of homeland and infrastructure,” the report stated.   

The CII also urged government to launch a national infrastructure plan for securing the cities. It also demanded ‘a robust centralised security system, pushing the concept of safe city.’

“All the megacities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad should have an integrated security system installed at the earliest, said Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of CII.