Acting on a directive by the Centre to modernise the police force, the West Bengal Government has submitted a proposal to set up a Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems covering all police stations.

State Chief Secretary Samar Ghosh said that the CCTNS proposal involving an expenditure Rs 104 crore had been sent to the Centre for its approval.

The central government has asked all states to modernise police forces giving top priority to crime investigation and criminal detection system, information gathering and its dissemination among police units across the country.

The system aims at enhancing efficiency and effective policing at all levels, especially at the police station level, through adoption of principles of e-governance and creation of a nationwide networked infrastructure for evolution of an IT-enabled state-of-the-art tracking system.

A little fewer than 500 police stations in the state would come under the purview of the system, Ghosh said yesterday.

Being a 100 per cent centrally-funded scheme, the system would provide all states with the required funding to run the programme in the current Plan period up to 2011-12, while the states would bear infrastructure and manpower costs.

Ghosh said he had a series of meetings yesterday with Home Secretary G D Gautama and other senior police officials on modernisation of police in the state including in Kolkata, as well as on counter-insurgency force and unified command to counter Maoist movement.