Over 1,700 police stations without online FIR system

None of the 1,793 police stations in four states, including Bihar and Rajasthan, are covered under the Centre’s ambitious online tracking system to file FIR online, even as the deadline for achieving the target ends this month.

This comes at a time when Union territories and 14 states, including Karnataka and Delhi, file all FIRs through the Crime and Criminals Tracking Network System (CCTNS).

Nine states and Union territories were added to the list only in the last two months, after the home ministry’s prodding.

According to a status report of the Home ministry, 15,008 police stations across the country are covered by the multi-crore project aimed at developing a national database of crimes and criminals.

Of this, 894 police stations in Bihar, 863 in Rajasthan, 23 in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and 13 in Lakshadweep are covered under CCTNS, but none of them filed an FIR online. The ministry had advised states to use the offline version of CCTNS where network connectivity is unstable or not synchronised with State Data Centre.

Besides Karnataka and Delhi, other states that file 100 per cent FIRs online are Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Meghalaya, Tripura, Goa, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

There are nine states and Union territories registering more than 90 per cent FIRs online, officials said hoping that they would soon join the 100 per cent club.

The Union Cabinet had in November last approved the revamp of an e-initiative to link police stations across the country by integrating them with a similar project in criminal justice system besides extending its deadline to March 2017.

The project, officials believe, would strengthen the country’s counter-terrorism and crime detection mechanism.

In November, only five states had online coverage of 100 per cent FIRs forcing the ministry to send letters to states asking them to achieve 100 per cent by January this year.

The project aims at building a database of criminals, which could be accessed by a police officer anywhere in the country for investigation.

The CCTNS facilitates collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, transfer and sharing of data and information at police station and between police stations and State Headquarters and the Central Police Organisations.