Budget 2014: No funds for previous UPA government's key CCTNS project

NEW DELHI: Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems (CCTNS), a key initiative of the previous UPA regime that aimed to synchronise databases of security organisations, seems to have been abandoned by the NDA government as no funds were allocated to it in today's Budget.

In the 2013-14 budget, Rs 120 crore was earmarked for CCTNS while Rs 37.23 crore had been given in 2012-13 budget.

The maiden budget speech of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has no mention about the CCTNS project, which was conceived by former Home Minister P Chidambaram after the Mumbai terror attacks.

Under the project, approximately 14,000 police stations throughout the country were planned to be connected apart from higher offices in police hierarchy.

The Rs 2,000 crore project, approved in 2009, spans across all the States and Union Territories. As per the plan, it would connect a total of more than 21,000 locations.

The CCTNS would be a comprehensive database for crimes and criminals, and it would be easier for the law enforcement agencies to track down a criminal moving from one place to another.

The project aims at creation of a nation-wide networking infrastructure for evolution of IT-enabled sophisticated tracking system around 'investigation of crime and detection of criminals.'

Chidambaram had said that the police stations in the country were virtually unconnected islands and there was no system of data storage, sharing or accessing data.

He had said there was no system under which one police station can talk to another directly and there was no record of crimes or criminals that can be accessed by a Station House Officer, except the manual records relating to that police station.

"Realising the gross deficiency in connectivity," the previous UPA government had implemented this programme.

However, a sum of Rs 5 crore has been allocated in the Budget for National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), another pet project of the previous UPA government. Rs 14 crore was given to NATGRID in 2013-14 Budget.