Lucknow, Aug 25 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath Friday said the 'Safe City Project' is proving useful in fulfilling the resolve to ensure women's safety, respect and self-reliance.

He also directed officials to equip all police stations in 18 identified cities with CCTVs within the next week.

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The chief minister's instruction came during a meeting to review the progress of the 'Safe City Project' in the state.

Adityanath said that CCTVs should be compulsorily installed in all commercial establishments, road intersections, government, private hospitals, and educational institutions.

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He added that modern control rooms, pink police booths, Asha Jyoti Kendras, CCTVs, help desks in women's police stations, panic buttons in buses and other security measures that have been implemented under the Lucknow Police Commissionerate through the 'Safe City Project' will now be expanded to other cities in the state.

He said the project is "proving very useful in fulfilling the resolve to ensure women's safety, respect and self-reliance".

"Currently the Safe City project is focused on the safety of women. We should expand it and also link it to the safety of the elderly, children and disabled people," Adityanath added.

In the review meeting, the chief minister added that 17 municipal corporations and Gautam Budh Nagar are being developed as a 'Safe City' in the first phase. In the second phase, the municipalities of 57 district headquarters will be linked to the 'Safe City' project and 143 municipalities will be linked in the third phase.

Special branding will also be done by putting up a 'Safe City' board at the entrance of all such cities, the chief minister said.

Officials at the meeting told the chief minister that the police have so far identified 9,396 places for installation of CCTVs in several smart cities -- Agra, Aligarh, Bareilly, Jhansi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Moradabad, Prayagraj, Saharanpur and Varanasi smart cities. Installation is complete at 3,489 spots.

The process of selecting agencies is underway for CCTV installation at over 7,600 places identified in Ayodhya, Gorakhpur, Firozabad, Mathura-Vrindavan, Shahjahanpur, Meerut and Ghaziabad, the officials said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)