In a year, no more physical police verification for passports: Home Secretary


New Delhi, Aug 21 (PTI): The physical police verification for getting a passport will soon be a thing of the past as the government plans to connect the service with a robust national database of crimes and criminals that will check the antecedents of applicants at the click of a mouse.

Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi said the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems Project (CCTNS) is expected to link with the passport service of the Ministry of External Affairs and it will replace physical police verification for passport applicants with online verification in a year.

"Police in some states are already using CCTNS for passport credentials. Police will be given hand held devices to go to an applicant's address and his or her details will be uploaded with the network. It will minimise contact with police and reduce time," he told reporters here.

Mehrishi was speaking after Home Minister Rajnath Singh launched a digital police portal under the CCTNS project, which aims to create a national database of crimes and criminals and connect country's all 15,398 police stations with it.

He said with the port, mandate of the CCTNS has been expanded by incorporating citizen centric services 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 have been put in place and the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre has been roped in for the task.

The home minister said the digital police portal will provide citizens, facility 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," he said after launching the portal.

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.

Singh said the CCTNS project will help in realising the Prime Minister Narenda Modi's dream of 'Minimum Government Maximum Governance'.

A home ministry official said the CCTNS will facilitate pan-India search on complete national crime and criminal database that is accessible to the investigating officers throughout the country.

The CCTNS project will interconnect about 15,398 police stations and additional 5,000 offices of supervisory police officers across the country and digitise data related to FIR registration, investigation and charge sheets in all police stations.

The project has been extended by the government for one year till March 2018.

The one-year extension will help the government to comprehensively achieve the remaining goals of the CCTNS, which was conceived by the former Home Minister P Chidambaram when the UPA was in power.

With a total budget of Rs 2,000 crore, a sum of Rs 1,550 crore has been spent till 2016-17.

The inter-operable criminal justice system aims to integrate the CCTNS project with e-courts and e-prison data bases in the first instance and with the other pillars of the criminal justice system, another official said.

The integration will be achieved by providing access to the judiciary, police and prisons through a desktop dashboard to facilitate expeditious and informed decisions and aid investigations.

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, the official said.

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.

  

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Comment on this article

  • SULTAN, Mangalore/Dubai

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    Friends from past 5 days i am trying to apply for passport for my new born son (Born in UAE) and not able to apply because the online line passport application link says (http://indiancitizenshiponline.nic.in/) UNDER MAINTENANCE. So you can Imagine will this work or not.

    DisAgree [4] Agree [9] Reply Report Abuse

  • Jossey Saldanha, Mumbai

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    Europe also removed all restriction & today it has become a terror hub ...

    DisAgree [21] Agree [10] Reply Report Abuse

  • Jenifer, Mangalore

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    Jossey,

    Europe became terror hub of/by outsiders who sought asylum. Hardly any local will be in the hub unless s/he had been radicalized.

    In India, the government is too keen on granting asylum on the basis of religion which someday will certainly become venomous snake biting the hand that fed but technological modernization such as this will save the citizens from cumbersome hassles to avail a Passport.

    DisAgree [3] Agree [22] Reply Report Abuse

  • Jossey Saldanha, Mumbai

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    Let us keep our fingers crossed ...

    DisAgree [8] Agree [6] Reply Report Abuse

  • Anonymous, Mangalore

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    Violence breeds more Violence

    DisAgree Agree Reply Report Abuse

  • Santan Mascarenhas, Kinnigoli/Mumbai

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    Presently. no police verification is required for re-issue of passport unless 3 years have elapsed between expiry of old passport and application. Also, minors and govt servants were exempted from this. With the new improvement, we can expect a quick issue of passport.

    It is reliably learnt, that govt is taking services of Tata Consultancy Services, and hence, things are being streamlined.

    DisAgree [1] Agree [15] Reply Report Abuse

  • Abdul Narayan D'Souza, Udupi

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    It is not just reliably learnt, but rather it is a fact that TCS are the IT service provider to the Passport office. It is not a secret and in fact you could find this information in the passport office website itself.

    With an web-based application process, confirmation of identity through Aadhaar and PSK in Mangalore; life cannot get much simpler for today's generation. I even wonder if today's kids would even know as to what it means to get a 'sarakari kelasa' done?

    I still remember that trouble I had to go through to get my first passport almost 19 years back.

    DisAgree Agree [4] Reply Report Abuse

  • Jenifer, Mangalore

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    Finally, improvement from primitive practices. The police will be cribbing for chai-paani reduced due to this modern technology. With Adhaar, more than 90% of the population may have been under electronic data, detectable with appropriate software. It time we the citizens benefit from the technology than wasting time in these personal/physical inspections.

    DisAgree Agree [8] Reply Report Abuse

  • John Tauro, M'luru / Kwt

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    Now must admit that even I offered chai-paani when a constable visited me 25 years ago, which had been a tradition during those days.

    DisAgree Agree Reply Report Abuse

  • MILAN, LUCERNE

    Tue, Aug 22 2017

    WILL BJP MEMBERS CRIMINAL DATA WILL BE DELETED OR NOT.

    ONLY PUROHIT AND PRAGYA CAN SAVE MODIJI.

    NOW HE WILL DEFINITELY USE THESE TWO TRUMP CARD TO USE IN 2019 ELECTION CAMPAIGN.

    I CAN HEAR HIM SAYING.. LIKE THIS

    MITHRON . CONGRESS WALONE DO BEKASOOR WALONKO 11 SAAL MITHRON GYAARA SAAL. BADI LAMBHI HOTHI HAI MITHRON.

    AGAR MEI JEETHGAYA THO. SONIA RAHUL, CHIDAMBARAM SAB KE SAB JAIL MEI HONGE.

    DisAgree [16] Agree [8] Reply Report Abuse


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