Govt approves Rs 2,000 cr IT project to enhance policing

With a view to ensure speedy and transparent investigation, the Centre today cleared a Rs 2,000 crore project of interlinking all police stations through Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems.     

The Information Technology enabled project proposal — Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) — with an outlay of Rs 2,000 crore in the 11th Five Year Plan was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.     

The CCTNS project aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of policing at the police station level by adopting principles of e-Governance, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram told reporters here.     

The objectives of the CCTNS project are streamlining investigation and prosecution processes, strengthening of intelligence gathering machinery, improved public delivery system, citizen-friendly interface and nationwide sharing of information on crime and criminals.     

"This is a critical requirement in the context of the present day internal security scenario," Chidambaram said.

It will facilitate collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, transfer and sharing of data and information among police stations, district, state headquarters and other organisation or agencies, including those at Government of India level, the Union Minister said.     

The system will also help in enabling and assisting the senior police officers in better management of police force, besides keeping track of the progress of the crime and criminal investigation, he said.         

People will also be able to file complaints to concerned police station and can get status of complaints or cases registered. Besides, copies of FIRs, postmortem reports and other permissible documents can also be obtained through this system, he said.     

The project, to be completed in three years, would be initiated by the Ministry of Home Affairs and implemented by the National Crime Records Bureau.      

"The CCTNS project is to be implemented in a manner where the major role would lie with the state governments in order to bring in the requisite stakes, ownership and commitment...Apart from the required review and monitoring of project implementation on a continuing basis," he said.

With the launching of CCTNS, the erstwhile Common Integrated Police Application (CIPA) programme would be subsumed into it in a manner that the work already done there under is not disrupted.      

"CIPA had been initiated to computerize and automate the functioning of police stations with a view to bringing in efficiency and transparency in various processes and functions at the police station level and improve service delivery to the citizens," Chidambaram said.       

So far, 2,760 police stations, out of a total of around 14,000 police stations across the country, have been covered under the scheme.