The physical police verification for getting a passport will soon end as the government is planning to have a robust national database of crimes and criminals that will check the backgrounds of applicants at the click of a mouse.
According to union home secretary, Rajiv Mehrishi, the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems Project (CCTNS) will be linked with the passport service. This will replace physical police verification with online verification.
“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 to the network. It will minimise contact with police and reduce time,” he said.
Mehrishi was speaking after the home minister, Rajnath Singh launched a digital police portal under CCTNS project. This aims to create a national database of crimes and criminals. It will also connect country’s all 15,398 police stations with it.
Talking about the safety of the database, he said the 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 job.
The home minister said, “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.”
