AHMEDABAD: Gujarat Police is set to organise the ‘Gujarat Police Innovation Challenge 2026’, a nationwide hackathon aimed at using artificial intelligence and advanced video analytics to strengthen surveillance and public safety.
The initiative, being conducted under the guidance of State Director General of Police G.S. Malik, will bring together innovators, startups, technology companies, developers and researchers to develop solutions for policing challenges. The hackathon is expected to begin in September.
The challenge aims to integrate more than 80,000 CCTV cameras installed across Gujarat. The cameras currently operate across different government departments, vendors, technologies, Video Management Systems and network architectures. The initiative will focus on enabling seamless surveillance and information sharing across these systems.
Participants will work with live CCTV feeds in real-world policing situations. Gujarat Police will test AI-based systems for real-time detection of suspicious persons, vehicles and unusual activities, along with automatic number plate recognition, vehicle tracking, watchlist matching and cross-camera searches.
The competition will be held in two stages. The first, the Open Innovation Challenge, will have two categories. Category 1 will include students and small and medium-sized startups, while Category 2 will include large startups and established technology companies.
The top performers will advance to the second stage, where the top six teams will demonstrate their solutions in a live production environment based on real-world policing scenarios.
The winning teams will compete for total cash prizes of Rs 37 lakh. Gujarat Police is organising the challenge with technology partnership support from i-Hub Gujarat and knowledge partnership from DA-IICT and the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU).
Participation details, eligibility criteria, competition rules and guidelines have been made available on the official portal sentinel.gujarat.gov.in.
