MUMBAI, May 13 -- The BMC standing committee on Tuesday rejected a Rs.7.09-crore proposal to upgrade and modernise the video walls at its main disaster management control room at the BMC headquarters and alternate control room at Parel. A video wall relays live feeds from the city's network of CCTV cameras and plays a key role, particularly during emergencies such as floods or disasters. It is also used to monitor regular events like traffic jams and manage crowd control. The committee unanimously rejected the contractor M/s Star Electric, which the BMC administration had recommended, because its bid was 22.5% lower than the civic body's estimate of Rs.7.51 crore. Of the five bids received by the BMC, four were lower than this estimated cost. Leader of the house Ganesh Khankar raised quality concerns, questioning how the contractor could provide quality services at such low rates. Preeti Satam, BJP corporator from Goregaon East, questioned why such an important project was being handed over to a blacklisted contractor, and was backed by everyone. The BMC plans to refurbish both the HQ and Parel video walls, which were set up in 2016. It stated that since the walls had been functional 24x7 for the last nine years, their eight panels had become old, which had affected the quality of the display. The civic body added that displaying and zooming in on particular feeds for visiting VIPs had also become slow and cumbersome due to the old system. While the city has a network of over 9,700 CCTV cameras, the video wall was able to display only feed from about 50 to 60 cameras at any given point of time, the BMC pointed out. Furthermore, it lacked updates from the websites of the disaster management department, the Indian Meteorological Department and Doppler radar, the Geographic Information System of Mumbai city and the city's pumping station dashboard....