14-Sep-2019: Centre removes names of 312 Sikh foreign nationals from Central Adverse List.
The Centre has removed names of 312 Sikh foreign nationals involved in anti-India activities from its blacklist/the Central Adverse List.
The Ministry of Home Affairs maintains a list officially named as the Central Adverse List. It has more than 35,000 names on it. It includes the names of individuals who supported the Khalistan movement in 1980s and 1990s but left India to take asylum in foreign countries. These are those who were in favour of a separate Sikh state and had opposed the Operation Blue Star.
Many of the Sikhs on this list fled India to escape the authorities and acquired foreign nationality and took asylum outside India. This list is not restricted to Punjab or the Khalistan movement alone. It has names of those individuals who are suspected to have links with terrorist outfits or have violated visa norms in their previous visit to India. The list also includes the names of those persons who have indulged in criminal activities or have been accused of sexual crimes against children in their respective countries.
It is a step taken by the Indian government to maintain internal security. This list is constantly used by all Indian Missions and Consulates to stop the individuals named in it from entering India. This is done by not granting visa to such persons. The list is also used to keep serious offenders outside India as a person may commit a crime in the native nation and then apply for an Indian visa to escape prosecution.
The list is maintained by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs with inputs from all the state governments. Various intelligence agencies constantly review this list and add new names to it. Central intelligence agencies as well as the state-level intelligence contributes to the information, determining the inclusion of a person in this list. Since law and order is a state subject, the state police is also utilised for intelligence gathering in order to update the list.
Most of the Sikh nationals in the list have remained outside the country since the 1980s and have not visited their families since then. With the names being removed, they can now visit India and meet their families here. They could also get access to consular services as well as an Indian visa.
This list had a multiplier effect in denying visas as the family members of the persons on this list were also denied visas to other countries. Such a practice will no longer be carried forward.
10-Jul-2019: NCRB proposes Automated Facial Recognition System
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released a Request for Proposal for an Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS) to be used by police officers across the country.
AFRS works by maintaining a large database with photos and videos of peoples’ faces. Then, a new image of an unidentified person — often taken from CCTV footage — is compared to the existing database to find a match and identify the person. The artificial intelligence technology used for pattern-finding and matching is called “neural networks”.
Current facial recognition in India is done manually. While fingerprints and iris scans provide far more accurate matching results, automatic facial recognition is an easier solution especially for identification amongst crowds.
The NCRB, which manages crime data for police, would like to use automated facial recognition to identify criminals, missing people, and unidentified dead bodies, as well as for “crime prevention”. Its Request for Proposal calls for gathering CCTV footage, as well as photos from newspapers, raids, and sketches. The project is aimed at being compatible with other biometrics such as iris and fingerprints. It will be a mobile and web application hosted in NCRB’s Data Centre in Delhi, but used by all police stations in the country. Automated Facial Recognition System can play a very vital role in improving outcomes in the area of Criminal identification and verification by facilitating easy recording, analysis, retrieval and sharing of Information between different organisations.
NCRB has proposed integrating this facial recognition system with multiple existing databases. The most prominent is the NCRB-managed Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS). Facial recognition has been proposed in the CCTNS program since its origin. The idea is that integration of fingerprint database, face recognition software and iris scans will massively boost the police department’s crime investigation capabilities. It will also help civilian verification when needed. No one will be able to get away with a fake ID.
In 2009, following the Mumbai terror attacks, CCTNS was envisaged as a countrywide integrated database on crime incidents and suspects, connecting FIR registrations, investigations, and chargesheets of all 15,500 police stations and 6,000 higher offices. It also plans to offer citizen services, such as passport verification, crime reporting, online tracking of case progress, grievance reporting against police officers, and more.
The new facial recognition system will also be integrated with Integrated Criminal Justice System (ICJS), as well as state-specific systems, the Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration & Tracking (IVFRT), and the Koya Paya portal on missing children.
The Rs 2,000-crore project is accessible to the CBI, Intelligence Bureau, National Investigation Agency, Enforcement Directorate and the Narcotics Control Bureau. The project did not meet its initial 2015 deadline and was extended to March 2017.
In August 2018, the first phase of connecting the police stations was nearly complete. In the second phase, the Home Ministry proposed integrating the database with the fingerprint database of the Central Finger Print Bureau (CFPB). NCRB is currently rolling out the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) and its integration with CCTNS.
Cyber experts across the world have cautioned against government abuse of facial recognition technology, as it can be used as tool of control and risks inaccurate results. International organisations have also condemned the Chinese government on its use of surveillance cameras and facial recognition to constrict the rights of Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority. In the US, the FBI and Department of State operate one of the largest facial recognition systems.
16-Jul-2019: Installation of CCTNS
Against a target of covering 14306 police stations, a total of 14874 police stations (excluding police stations in Bihar) have been covered under the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), which includes new police stations. A total of 20.10 crore records of crime/criminals are available at national level.
The objective of integration of CCTNS with Inter-operable Criminal Justice System is to facilitate use of information on crime and criminals in CCTNS with other databases on prisons, prosecution, forensics and courts in a holistic manner for administration of criminal justice.
21-Aug-2017: Union Home Minister launches the Digital Police Portal under CCTNS project
The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh has said the Ministry of Home Affairs will undertake steps to integrate the various organs of the Criminal Justice System such as the Police, Courts, Prisons, Prosecution, Forensic Laboratories, Finger Prints and Juvenile Homes with the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS) database. Launching the Digital Police Portal under the CCTNS project here today, he said this Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) will be a useful resource for all stakeholders including the policy makers.
The Digital Police Portal will enable citizens to register FIRs online and the portal will initially offer seven Public Delivery Services in 34 States & UTs, like Person and Address Verification e.g. of employees, tenants, nurses etc., permission for hosting Public Events, Lost & Found Articles and Vehicle theft etc. Besides, the portal will enable restricted access to law enforcement agencies on topics such as Antecedent Verification and make assessment of FIRs.
The CCTNS portal will provide investigator the complete record history of any criminal from anywhere across the country. He said the software offers Google-type Advance Search engine and analytical reports. The portal offers 11 kinds of search and 44 types of reports. Recently, the software was used to trace few mentally challenged women from Tamil Nadu in Uttarakhand and reunited with their families.
The CCTNS portal will form the backbone of the Criminal Justice System and this database will be subsequently linked with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) database on vehicle registrations.
5-Apr-2017: Cabinet approves extension of implementation of Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems Project by one year
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved the proposal of the Ministry of Home Affairs for extension of the implementation phase of the Crime and Criminals Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) Project for another year beyond 31st March 2017.
The extension would help in achieving the remaining objectives of the project comprehensively. The maintenance phase of the Project will continue till 2022 as approved earlier. With a total outlay of Rs. 2000 crore, a sum of Rs. 1550 crore, which was the total allocation to the project so far, has been spent till 2016-17.
The Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) aims to integrate the CCTNS project with the e-courts and e-prisons databases in the first instance and with the other pillars of the criminal justice system - Forensics, Prosecution, Juvenile homes and a nationwide Fingerprint data base of criminals in a phased manner. 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.
Impact of the CCTNS Project will lead to:
- Citizen portals in all states and Centre that will facilitate transparency and speed in police service delivery, online registration of complaints and reporting and search of missing persons and stolen goods in self-service mode.
- Pan-India search on complete National Crime and Criminal database that is accessible to the Investigating Officers throughout the country.
- Search facility will be available to Police in regional languages for improved inter-state tracking of criminal movement.
- Reliable network connectivity to all Police Stations in the country.
- National level crime analytics that will be published at, increased frequency to help policy and law makers in taking data backed timely actions and in making appropriate policy interventions.
- Integration with various e-Governance projects such as Aadhaar, National Population Register, Vaahan Project of the Ministry of Surface Transport, Passport Seva and National Emergency Response System Project thus increasing the synergies and benefit accrued from these individual systems. It will expedite various kinds of police verification requests and investigation.
- Advanced features such as biometric based identification, trend and pattern analytics etc. that will be incorporated to enhance hi-tech investigation capability.
- ICJS that will be available to all pillars of the criminal justice system helping improve its service delivery.
Achievements under CCTNS Project:
- In the last one year following significant outcomes have been achieved by the Project:
- More than 83% Police Stations in the country are entering 100% FIRs through CCTNS software.
- 120 lakhs FIR have been entered in CCTNS system till date. Legacy Crime records since 2004 have also been migrated to the CCTNS database. In all around seven crore records are now available in the national crime database.
- 31 States/UTs have launched their portals which provide various services like registration of complaints, verification of criminal antecedents/litigation of individuals/property, obtaining NOC from police for events for law and order clearance, search of missing person search, matching unidentified dead bodies, Vehicle related enquiries, antecedent verification for issue of passport etc.
- The ICJS dashboard has been implemented by integrating CCTNS with e-Courts and e-prisons and has been launched on a trial basis with select central investigation agencies.
- Software for Prosecutions and Forensics has been developed and is currently being rolled out in Bihar, Telangana and Puducherry.
Originally approved in 2009, the Project aims to:
- deliver various web based police related services to citizens.
- facilitate a pan-India search of crime and criminal records of individuals through a national database.
- generate crime and criminal reports at the state and central level to inform policy interventions and
- computerise police processes.
In 2015, an additional objective of establishing a basic platform for an Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) was added to the Project.