3-May-2022: The Union Minister for Home and Cooperation, Shri Amit Shah inaugurated the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) Bengaluru campus today

Union Minister for Home and Cooperation, Shri Amit Shah inaugurated the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) Bengaluru premises today. The Union Home Minister, Shri Amit Shah while addressing the gathering at the inaugural function said the Government under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi has had a zero tolerance policy against terrorism from the very first day.

The Union Home Minister said security requirements today have changed significantly as compared to the earlier security challenges in terms of data, scope and complexity. Therefore, there is a need for legal and security agencies to have automated, secure and immediate access to information obtained from reliable sources. The Government has entrusted the task of developing and operating a state-of-the-art and innovative information technology platform for accessing information from the data collection organizations to NATGRID.

The Home Minister said that the Union Government will soon be developing a national database to monitor hawala transactions, terrorist funding, counterfeit currency, narcotics, bomb threats, illegal arms smuggling and other terrorist activities. He said intelligence and legal agencies should now be able to make full use of them with the barriers to critical data being removed. With the help of data analytics and information technology, there should be a paradigm shift in the current way of working of agencies. He expressed hope that NATGRID will fulfill the responsibility of linking various sources of data.

The Union Home Minister said NATGRID should have an in-built mechanism for continuous upgradation. There should be a study group in NATGRID to create a database of modes operandi of various crimes committed within the country. Shri Amit Shah said that C-DAC is implementing NATGRID in line with Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi's vision of a self-reliant India. He said for quick and effective analysis information should not be kept in silos, as it does not result in the analysis of information and getting it properly done in time. The Home Minister said that for analysis of information, it is important that Accessible, Affordable, Available, Accountable and Actionable points are kept in mind. Shri Amit Shah said the Police Technology Mission announced by Prime Minister Modi in the Director Generals of Police Conference will start soon.

Union Home Minister Shri Amit Shah congratulated NATGRID employees for their achievements and also encouraged them to step up their efforts to take NATGRID to the next level. He expressed hope that NATGRID will build a strong foundation for intelligence departments and provide them with state-of-the-art tools in the fight against terrorist organizations and their supporters.

He requested user agencies to exercise caution and discretion in using this system, which should be used only for the correct purposes. They should also ensure that as much as possible, data from the system is used to improve their efficiency. He stressed that privacy and security of data is a very serious matter and assured that necessary protocols have been put in place to ensure that there is no unauthorized access to the personal data of any citizen through this system at any point of time.

The Chief Minister of Karnataka, Shri Basavaraj Bommai, the Home Minister of Karnataka, Shri Araga Gyanendra, the Union Minister of State for Home, Shri Nishith Pramanik and the Union Home Secretary were also present at the inauguration ceremony.

The NATGRID CEO informed that the services of NATGRID solution will be available to 11 central agencies and police of all States and Union Territories. It will link user agencies with data holders, giving them access to real-time information needed for intelligence services and investigations. C-DAC Pune has been roped in as Technology Partner and IIT, Bhilai as Plan Management Consultant for the development of NATGRID solution.

12-Sep-2019: NATGRID wants to link social media accounts to central database

The National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) project wants to link social media accounts to the huge database of records related to immigration entry and exit, banking and telephone details among others.

The project, initially started in 2009 with a budget of ₹2,800 crore, is an online database for collating scattered pieces of information and putting them on one platform. At least 10 central agencies like Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and others will have access to the data on a secured platform.

The proposal has received resistance from the intelligence agencies, whose officials fear that linking the social media accounts to sensitive government data could expose the system to “trojan attacks.”

The project gathered pace in 2016, when the NDA government appointed an IB officer Ashok Patnaik as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). After Mr. Patnaik retired, NATGRID is now headed by IAS officer Ashish Gupta.

Home Minister Amit Shah reviewed the progress of NATGRID. He was given a presentation on the present status of NATGRID but no decision was taken on structural issues.

NATGRID links intelligence and investigation agencies. The 10 user agencies will be linked independently with certain databases that would be procured from 21 providing organisations and include telecom, tax records, bank, immigration, etc. to enable the generation of intelligence inputs.

Linking the database to social media accounts could jeopardize the entire exercise as it could be exposed to unknown virus attacks from open source Internet. Intelligence agencies had also earlier opposed the NATGRID itself amid fears that it would impinge on their territory and possibly result in leaks on the leads they were working on to other agencies.

An expression of interest (EOI) issued by NATGRID in 2017 had said “NATGRID is intending to set up an Entity Extraction, Visualization and Analytics (EVA) system that would collect and analyse information available from various data sources.”

While NATGRID’s data recovery centre in Bengaluru has been constructed, its office complex in South Delhi is nearing completion.

In January, NATGRID revived its EOI to select a System Integrator (SI) to provide a software solution, recommend hardware specification for running the solution and integrating and implementing the composite EVA solution. The EOI specified that the company bidding for the project should have a turnover of at least ₹1,600 crore.