Project to connect police stations across country in limbo for 5 yrs

The ambitious Mega City Policing project—aimed at connecting all police commissionerates across the state (and the centre) — which was launched almost five years ago, appears to be in limbo.

The ambitious Mega City Policing project—aimed at connecting all police commissionerates across the state (and the centre) — which was launched almost five years ago, appears to be in limbo.

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A status check of the project reveals that while some aspects of the project, initiated by the Union home ministry, have been implemented by different police commissionerates in small measures, lots more needs to be done before finally integrating the state with the Centre.

Director General of Police (DGP), K Subramanyam however, hopes the project would become operational in the next six-seven months if work is carried out at its present pace. “The MHA (ministry of home affairs) has already surveyed our project, like other states. I hope the project becomes operational in the next 6-7 months,” Subramanyam hoped.

He said the project will modernise the state police. “We have already implemented some things in some police commissionerates such as the Navi Mumbai and Pune police have already completed their GPS networking project. Similarly, the CCTV networking project is presently underway in Mumbai,” Subramanyam said.

“Once this is implemented, it would help track the movement of criminals from any part of the country. There will be a centralised database, which will be constantly updated, and police stations across the country can it at all times,” the DGP said.

He said the MHA has sent the software (for the CCTNS) to the Maharashtra police. “The states have to customise the software according to their local laws before sending it back to the MHA for an integrated national database,” Subramanyam said. He added that the Maharashtra police has customised the software and sent it to Wipro for fine tuning, before dispatching the same to the MHA.