New Delhi: The Centre’s ambitious Rs2,000-crore project to bring all 16,000 police stations in the country under a single network to counter terror challenges will become operational by 2011-12.

“We are working on Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS). That will link each of the 16,000 police station in India so that any of the police stations can contact any other police station for any information,” a home ministry official said.

The states have appointed nodal officers for the project’s early completion and all of them have signed memorandum of understanding with the Centre for the purpose.

“Once the CCTNS is completed, it will mark a quantum jump in country’s ability to counter various challenges to internal security, particularly terror threats,” the official said.

Key objectives of the CCTNS project include creating platforms at state and Central levels for sharing crime and criminal information and databases across across the country.

This would enable easy sharing of real-time information across police stations and districts at the state level and across states, at the national level, thereby resulting in improved investigation and crime prevention and better tracking of criminals, suspects, accused and repeat offenders.

It will also help in creating a platform for sharing intelligence across the states, across the country and across other state-level and central agencies.

Besides, it would facilitate improved service delivery to the public, access to police services in a citizen-friendly manner and provide alternative modes of service delivery such as Internet.

The CCTNS project covers all 35 states and Union territories. Within states, more than 16,000 police stations and 6,000 higher offices, including district headquarters and range offices, are covered.

The system will provide enhanced tools for investigation, crime prevention, law and order maintenance and other functions like traffic management and emergency response.