After doing so many preparations for the Ganpati immersions, including the CCTV cameras, the civic officials now realize that these cameras were really worth installing and gave them a run for the money spent on these cameras. The total cost of installing them was about 3.2 lakh. These cameras proved very effective in preventing the people from going deep inside the river water for immersing the idols in Pavana River.

Apart from this, it helped the officials to control the huge crowds and keep the trouble mongers at bay. In order to monitor the immersions, the officials had made temporary monitor rooms to keep an eye on the people. This room was manned by the fire brigade and the civic employees. With the help of these cameras these officials could easily spot that two people were trying to go deep into the river near the Subhashnagar ghat; immediate action was taken to stop them.

The CCTV cameras had been installed at various locations. Most of them were installed along the routes allocated for the immersion procession and the ghats. A joint engineer of the electricity department, Pravin Tupe, informed, “The PCMC had installed high resolution cameras which could capture images of a person at a distance of 100 metres. The cameras could rotate 360 degrees, because of which a large area was under surveillance”.

He added that, “The CCTV cameras recorded footage for around 15 hours from around noon to 3 am. A civic employee, one policeman and one employee of the private contractor were present at each of the locations to monitor the footage. If anything objectionable or of significance was spotted, the police and firemen posted at the chowks and immersion ghats were informed”.

The efficient cameras and the excellent team work of the officials made it possible to keep people in control. The person monitoring the cameras was able to alert the officials deployed near the crowds. This decision was made by the PCMC at the eleventh hour. Before this decision was made, the police officials had stresses on the installation of these cameras, keeping in mind the bomb blast that took place in New Delhi. The city police, Meeran C. Borwankar had held a meeting with the various Ganesh mandals and the civic officials to install these cameras at the main roads and squares.

Looking at the various advantages yielded by these cameras, the civic officials are now planning to install these cameras on a permanent basis. They plan to initially install them on 25 locations. They will be helpful for the officials of the fire department, police, and also the traffic police.

The civic officials believe that these cameras will help upgrading the security of the busy places. During the monsoons, it will help them to monitor the level of water and issue warnings to people on time. They will also be installed outside some railway stations to monitor the crowds. The plans include setting up a central room from where these cameras would be monitored.