Come December, and more than 2.5 lakh police personnel across the country will be given basic IT training as part of the Centre's plan to keep track of crime and movement of criminals.

The security men will be trained to work on State Wide Area Network (SWAN), Virtual Private Network over Broadband, Multi Protocol Label Switching, Virtual private Network, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) and Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT).

"The training on Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems (CCTNS) software will commence after its roll out in states and Union Territories in the last week of December," a Home Ministry official said.

Under the CCTNS project, the Centre wants to connect 15,015 police stations and 7,000 higher offices including circles, districts, sub-divisions and state headquarters.

The CCTNS scheme is proposed to be implemented in a mission mode and aims to make the police functioning citizen friendly, transparent, accountable, effective and efficient.

It also aims at improving delivery of citizen-centric services through effective usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for providing Investigating Officers tools, technologies and information to facilitate faster and more accurate investigation of crime and detection of criminals.

Under the project, capacity building is also being done by setting up or strengthening police training colleges, regional training colleges and district training colleges for imparting training to police personnel.