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Adith Charlie

Mumbai, Sept. 8 Very soon, police stations in Gujarat could wear a look straight out of the popular crime-show ‘CID’.

One would not be surprised to see a police constable checking the status of his leave application on his computer while his colleagues dabble with devices that capture fingerprints and faces of criminals.

In six to nine months’ time this could be a reality, as the police department of Gujarat has awarded a Rs 18 crore project to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to automate and electronically link up each of the 483 police stations in the State.

As part of the project, which will stretch up to five years, TCS will develop, deploy and support enterprise-wide software in all of these police stations. This implementation is the first of its kind in India, Mr Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice-President and Head, Global Government Unit at TCS, told Business Line.

Once this initiative takes off, TCS estimates that about 25 per cent of trained policemen in Gujarat will be freed from doing clerical jobs. This is because data entered once can be electronically made available in real time to every police station; police officials will be able to access this data depending on the hierarchy and their designation, said Mr Chakrabarty.

This will improve the ‘policeman-to-citizen’ ratio in the West Indian state that has a 70,000 strong police force. TCS has already begun work on the pilot project at one of the police stations in the state. TCS has also been commissioned to develop the Web portal for the Gujarat Police. Through this portal, a citizen would be able to file a complaint from his home through the Internet without physically going to the police station. The citizen will also get a proof of filing the complaint with the police station

Through the new ERP-like system, records pertaining to various criminals and cases will be available at every police station in the State. Moreover, many administrative functions related to the police force- such as personnel management systems, salary, payroll management, accounting etc- will be made available on the online platform.

TCS will also support the Gujarat Police’s endeavour to deploy biometric devices in every police station. This will enable the police to keep an online database of fingerprints and other proofs of identity. However, for the hardware requirements of this project, the Gujarat Police is yet to take a call on whether procurement would be in-house or outsourced to vendors.

More Stories on : Software | E-Governance | Gujarat | Tata Consultancy Services Ltd

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