PM quizzes Bengaluru cops on digital policing

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday evening quizzed city police officers through video conferencing on how effectively they were using digital technology for better policing.

"When the prime minister sought details of digital policing, Cubbon Park police station inspector C. Balakrishna made a presentation on the IT software we are using and explained to him its various features," city's Additional Commissioner of Police C.H. Pratap Reddy told reporters here.

Modi's 30-minute-long interaction with the city police was part of his fifth interaction with one police station each in Karnataka, Assam and Uttar Pradesh through the ICT-based multi-modal platform for Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (Pragati) from the Prime Minister's Office in New Delhi.

"The prime minister was very insightful and enquired about the various high-tech facilities, including the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) scheme and asked how the technology would be used for providing citizen-centric services in real time," Reddy said.

Smart policing and the central government's Digital India initiative was adopted at the Cubbon Park station in the city centre after Modi chose it along with one each in Guwahati and Lucknow for the interaction through video conference.

"The prime minister called for enhancing sophistication and speed implementation of the CCTNS scheme across the country on the occasion," the PMO said in a statement.

The state government has implemented the CCTNS project with Rs.70 crore grant from the central government in 2011 for using IT-enabled network to investigate crimes and hunt down criminals.

"The prime minister also asked how search features work, how do we track and how useful was the database," Reddy said.

Director General of Police Om Prakash and Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee also participated in the interaction along with Deputy Commissioner of Police (central) Sandeep Patil and other police officers.