13 states, UTs filing 100% FIRs online under CCTNS

As many as 13 states and Union Territories have started registering 100 per cent FIRs under the ambitious Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems (CCTNS) project, a synchronised online initiative for tracking crime and criminals by integrating nearly 15,000 police stations across the country.

Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Meghalaya, Tripura, Goa, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu have achieved the feat of registering 100 per cent FIRs under the CCTNS software.

However, so far no FIR was registered in Bihar, Rajasthan and Lakshadweep under the CCTNS despite 1,771 police stations of the two states and the UT being included in the project.

So far, a total of 14,844 police stations across the country have been brought under the CCTNS project. Excluding Bihar, Rajasthan and Lakshadweep, 13,073 police stations in the rest of the country are registering the FIRs online.

The Narendra Modi government in November last year gave its approval for completion of CCTNS, a project conceived by the previous UPA government, by March 2017.

CCTNS project will interconnect about 15,000 police stations and additional 5,000 offices of supervisory police officers across the country and digitize data related to FIR registration, investigation and chargesheets in all police stations.

This would lead to development of a national database of crimes and criminals.

The full implementation of the project with all the new components would lead to a central citizen portal having linkages with state level citizen portals that will provide a number of citizen-friendly services.

These include services like police verification for various purposes like issuance of passport, reporting a crime and online tracking of the case progress, online reporting of grievances against police officials, accessing victim compensation fund and legal services etc. .

The project will enable national-level crime analytics to be published at increased frequency, helping policymakers as well as lawmakers in taking appropriate and timely action.

It will also enable pan-India criminal/accused name search in the regional language for improved inter-state tracking of criminal movement.

The 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.