A draft data protection bill presented to the government last year still has not been approved by the cabinet or introduced into parliament. The country has already had problems implementing Aadhaar, one of the world’s biggest biometric databases linking everything from bank accounts to income tax filings, which been plagued by reports of data leaks and the growth of a black market for personal information.

So far, not much is known about which companies might bid on the facial-recognition system. Minutes of a meeting with potential bidders, obtained by the Internet Freedom Foundation through a right to information request, showed unidentified companies sought clarifications on integrating facial recognition data with state databases and whether it should be able to identify people with plastic surgery.

Vasudha Gupta, a spokeswoman for the Home Ministry, did not respond to an email seeking comments about the system.

For some in the police force, the system will be an essential tool to fight crime if implemented properly. India has seen more than 100 terrorist attacks in the last three decades, including one on luxury hotels and a railway station in Mumbai that killed 166 people in 2008.

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Nilabh Kishore, who headed a unit fighting organised crime in the state of Punjab until last year, had success against gangsters after he set up a system linking data from police stations across the state.

“A system that can identify criminals is invaluable – facial recognition is a powerful tool,” said Kishore, who is now deputy inspector general of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. “But human intentions are also very important. You can make the best of technology, but if human intentions are wrong it can be a tool for misuse.”

That is particularly a concern for vulnerable minority groups that have long faced discrimination in India. Lower castes and tribals account for about a quarter of the population but constitute 34 per cent of India’s prisoners, according to the National Dalit Movement for Justice.

In January, the Delhi High Court said it was “unacceptable” that facial recognition had not helped trace any of the 5,000 children missing from the city in three years. Earlier this month, photos and phone numbers from a Madurai city police facial recognition database in the southern state of Tamil Nadu were leaked online.

The threat of foreign spying is also persistent. Last month a federal government think tank criticised the local administration in Delhi for hiring the Indian arm of Chinese firm Hikvision to set up 150,000 CCTV cameras, saying the move could spur illegal hacking and data leaks to the Chinese government.

Foreign surveillance companies operating in India include CP Plus, Dahua, Panasonic Corp., Bosch Security Systems, Honeywell International Inc., and D-Link India Ltd.

Many Indian companies will not be able to bid on the facial-recognition system because the current tender requires them to meet standards established by the US National Institute of Science and Technology, according to Atul Rai, chief executive officer of Staqu Technologies, an Indian start-up.

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Rai, whose company has developed facial recognition for eight local police forces, said India does not have the same quality cameras as China – making it harder to meet the goal of being able to identify any person with an integrated system. He also said it would be more difficult to implement a national network in India because state governments are responsible for law and order.

“But if this one happens in line with the government’s plan, it should be a China-like system,” Rai said. “Any powerful country wants to be like China when it comes to using technology to monitor people – even western countries.”