The CCTNS system has its own advantages for all stakeholders in law & order. However, its implementation has been deferred several times by now. What are the major issues? Discuss.

The Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) project was launched in 2009 as part of its police modernization program under the national e-governance project. It was conceived to bring all 16,000 police stations in India under a single network to confront terror challenges. The main objective of CCTNS is to connect all the police stations for better joint action through the collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, and transfer the information among police stations, state headquarters, and central police organizations.

Advantages

The system has its own advantages for all stakeholders in law & order.

• It provides an online monitoring system for effective supervision and a real-time analysis of crime reports.
• It provides access to information on crimes and criminals.
• It also envisages the integration of Forensic labs, FingerPrint Bureaus, Police Control Rooms, and Police stations.
• It enables one-time data entry of information and real-time generation of reports and records.
• It provides the ability to online grievances redressal for citizens.

Implementation and issues

The implementation program of the CCTNS project has been facing some challenges.

• Adequate infrastructure facility for connecting police stations on the network has not been built fully.
• Several central and state agencies are involved in the project but being a state subject Police, Law & Order is facing challenges like non-uniformity.
• Lack of orientation of police personnel in the states and UTs to adopt the technology and CCTNS application.
• Network connectivity issues for police stations especially in geographically difficult locations.

Way forward

To address the challenges the government has taken multiple measures i.e. introduction of a role-based training program for police personnel; fund allocation for the State Project Management Units; provide technical guidance; sharing of data digitization tools to speed up the digitization of legacy crime and criminal records; provision of software-based tools and mechanisms to handle data in different languages, etc. BSNL will provide services for connectivity in the areas wherever needed.