AIBRIEF
Right to Information (RTI) replies show no facial recognition rule and no privacy impact assessment at Jantar Mantar, Delhi's main protest ground; the Internet Freedom Foundation and a Delhi High Court petitioner want the live matching stopped.
Delhi Police are running live facial recognition on protesters at Jantar Mantar, the centuries-old observatory in central Delhi that doubles as the city's main protest ground. The Internet Freedom Foundation, which obtained the figure under RTI, says the system operates from a Mobile Command and Control Vehicle and a smaller van labelled "Ikshana" fitted with 360-degree cameras on a telescopic mast, and matches captured faces against a police database in near real time. The system's positive-match threshold is 80%, well below the level most researchers and vendors consider reliable for identification.
RTI replies, extracted only after a second appeal before the Central Information Commission, show Delhi Police has no policy governing FRT, has never conducted a privacy impact assessment, and follows no data retention rules. A senior officer told the press the system is live on protesters; another admitted no retention guidelines are in place. India Today notes there is no official confirmation the system is tied to the Aadhaar database, despite viral speculation on X.
On 24 July 2026, the Internet Freedom Foundation wrote to the Commissioner of Police demanding an immediate halt to the system and deletion of data already collected. Student activist Aishe Ghosh has separately asked the Delhi High Court to declare the deployment unconstitutional and order destruction of the dataset. Open: who procured the system, who operates it day to day, and what demographic-bias or accuracy data exists. Delhi Police has not answered on the record.