The physical police verification for getting a passport may soon be dispensed with as the Centre plans to connect the procedure with Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems Project (CCTNS), a project first conceptualised by the UPA government in 2009.
Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi said the CCTNS, an exhaustive national database of crimes and criminals that will check the antecedents of applicants at the click of a mouse, was expected to be linked with the passport service of the External Affairs Ministry.
National database
“Police in some states are already using CCTNS for passport credentials. Police will be given handheld devices to go to an applicant’s address and his or her details will be uploaded on the network. It will minimise contact of an individual with police and reduce time (for getting passport),” Mr. Mehrishi told reporters.
Mr. Mehrishi was speaking after Home Minister Rajnath Singh launched the CCTNS project, which aims to connect the country’s all 15,398 police stations.
He said the mandate of the CCTNS had been expanded by incorporating citizen-centric services such as tenant verification, which could be done with the consent of the person being verified, quick registration of FIR in any crime and connecting the network with criminal justice delivery system.
Asked about the safety of the database, the Home Secretary said possibility of hacking was always there but enough safeguards had been put in place and the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre had been roped in for the task.
The Home Minister said the digital police portal would provide citizens facilities for online complaint registration and request for antecedent verification. “The police portal will provide 11 searches and 46 reports from the national database for state police and central investigation agencies. Central investigating and research agencies have also been provided logins to the digital police database to access crime statistics,” Mr. Singh said.
Mr. Singh said the CCTNS has enabled 13,775 out of 15,398 police stations to enter 100 per cent data into the software. He said as of now the CCTNS national database has around 7 crore data records pertaining to past and current criminal cases. The project will interconnect about 15,398 police stations and 5,000 offices of supervisory police officers across the country.
