Complete crime tracking mission fast: Chidambaram

New Delhi, March 11 : Home Minister P. Chidambaram Thursday asked his officers to stick to timelines and complete by 2012 the Crime Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) project, a national databank of crime and criminals and their biometric profiles.

"Terrorists and organised criminals have developed overt and covert technologies, including information communication technology. This has made the job of law and order professionals far more challenging than ever before," Chidambaram said, advocating a real time decision support system.

Addressing the silver jubilee function of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), the home minister said the CCTNS database will have a handshake with databases of over a dozen agencies of the criminal justice system like courts, jails, immigration and passport authorities.

"It would subsequently be extended to other national agencies through the national intelligence grid (NATGRID) so that terror and crime could be fought more professionally," he added.

The CCTNS is a flagship plan project of the home ministry with an outlay of Rs.2,000 crore and the NCRB has been mandated to roll out the project.

Chidambaram called upon domain experts to study the best practices in other countries in the fields of crime criminal database management systems and citizen-centric interfaces and services with a view to incorporating the same in the CCTNS project.

He called for the testing and benchmarking of new cutting-edge web-enabled technologies in the field of fingerprint and palm print identification.

Admitting that implementation of the CCTNS was a "gigantic task", Chidambaram pointed out that there had been the "slippages" while sticking to deadlines.

He said selection of software that should have been finalised by February this year was yet to be done and is expected to be complete March end.

The deadline for the finalisation of the network design of police stations had also lapsed.

"We need to connect, coordinate and supplement our effort both at macro and micro levels," he said.