Delhi's Duplicate Image Problem: How the Capital Stacks Up Against Mumbai, London and Seoul

Delhi's public record systems are carrying thousands of duplicate images — photographs tagged to the wrong heritage sites, mismatched infrastructure project photos circulating across government portals, and recycled stock pictures embedded in civic planning documents. The problem is documented, persistent, and only now drawing serious institutional attention.

The issue has sharpened because of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation's Phase 4 expansion, which requires updated photographic documentation of construction progress across corridors from Janakpuri West to R.K. Ashram Marg. Internal audits of project portals have found repeated instances of images from Phase 3 sites — including Dwarka Sector 21 and Okhla — being reused or mistagged under Phase 4 headings, creating confusion in environmental clearance filings and public information boards.

What's Happening on the Ground

The Archaeological Survey of India's Delhi circle, which oversees more than 170 protected monuments in and around the capital, has been working since early 2025 to clean up its digital image repositories. The effort targets sites from Mehrauli Archaeological Park to Feroz Shah Kotla, where duplicated and low-resolution images had been indexed multiple times under different monument codes. The ASI has not publicly disclosed how many images were identified as duplicates, but the cleanup is ongoing as of this month.

Delhi Urban Art Commission, which vets design proposals for projects in the city's heritage zones including Shahjahanabad in Old Delhi, has also flagged the problem in submissions from private developers. Applicants routinely submit photograph packages where the same exterior shot of a building appears under multiple site-assessment categories, padding documentation without adding informational value. The Commission began requiring geotagged, timestamped original photographs for all heritage zone submissions starting January 2026.

Mumbai's Municipal Corporation moved earlier. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation integrated a duplicate-detection protocol into its building proposal portal in mid-2024, using hash-based image verification — a relatively low-cost technical fix that flags identical files before they enter the system. The BMC has not published outcome data publicly, but the protocol has been cited in urban governance discussions as a model for other Indian metros.

How Delhi Compares to Global Peers

Seoul's city government adopted AI-assisted image deduplication across its Smart City data platform in 2023, part of a broader ₩4.2 trillion digital infrastructure investment announced that year. London's Historic England began a systematic review of its National Heritage List image metadata in 2022, with a stated goal of correcting approximately 18,000 mistagged records by end of 2025. Both cities started with what Delhi is still building: a centralised, searchable digital asset registry that spans agencies.

Delhi has no single cross-agency image registry. The Delhi Development Authority, the ASI Delhi circle, DMRC, and the Delhi government's own Information and Publicity Department each maintain separate digital archives with different file standards, no shared deduplication protocol, and no mandatory interoperability. That fragmentation is the structural reason duplicates persist. It is not unique to Delhi — Karachi and Dhaka face similar siloing — but cities that have made headway, including Seoul and Bogotá, did so by designating one coordinating body with authority over metadata standards across departments.

The Delhi government's IT department launched a Digital Delhi Data Governance Policy in March 2026, which includes provisions for standardising image metadata across state agencies. Implementation timelines under that policy run to December 2027 for full compliance. Central government ministries operating in the capital, including those overseeing ASI, fall outside the policy's scope, which means the most image-heavy heritage body in the city is not covered.

For residents, developers, and journalists trying to access accurate photographic records of a site — whether on Chandni Chowk or along the Yamuna floodplain — the practical advice is blunt: treat any image sourced from a government portal as unverified until cross-checked against geotagged originals or on-site inspection. Until Delhi builds the centralised registry its own policy promises, the duplicate problem will continue to quietly undermine the credibility of public documentation across the city's most consequential planning decisions.