Citing uneven progress in some states, Government on Thursday extended by three years the duration of a project to set up a system to track crime and criminals across the country.

The cabinet committee on economic affairs, at a meeting chaired by prime minister Manmohan Singh, approved extension of the duration of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) Project up to March 2015.

The project was scheduled to end in March 31, this year.

"In view of the requests of the state governments and the uneven progress in states, the CCEA has agreed to extend the period for completion of the project till March 2015," home minister P Chidambaram told reporters.

He, however, added that the the three-year extension did not mean that the bulk of the project would not be completed before March 2015.

"There will be different dates on which the project will be completed in different states. There will be no increase in funds required for the project because the pace of expenditure is extremely slow," Chidambaram said.

He said the expenses of the project would be met through funds that were originally earmarked.

Funds to the tune of Rs 418.87 crore have been released to the states/UTs and about 4.54 lakh personnel have been trained under capacity building against a target of about 11.34 lakh personnel, he said.

Capacity building has been completed for 861 units out of a target of 902 units, he said.

The inter-ministerial consultations for project conceptualisation during 2008-09 took time and the enforcement of Model Code for 2009 General Elections further extended the approval process, an official release said.

The statement said the project implementation was envisaged from 2008-12 and the Cabinet approval was received only on June 19, 2009, a year later than envisaged.

It said other downstream activities including signing of MoUs, formation of governance structure committees and establishment of state designated agencies were thus delayed.

Also, it was conceptualised that the software development would be completed within one year of hiring the vendor, that is, by June 2011 including gathering software functional requirements from three states/UTs, it said.

However, the number of states were later expanded to 10 states/UTs to ensure maximum coverage which added to the delays in the software development in the project.

CCTNS aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency of policing at the Police Station level through adoption of e-Governance.

It also seeks to create a nationwide networked infrastructure for evolution of IT-enabled tracking system around "investigation of crime and detection of criminals".

The project cost is Rs 2,000 crore which is hundred per cent centrally funded.