The Home Ministry has sought over Rs 3,400 crore for its high-tech intelligence network NATGRID which aims to collate sensitive information from databases of departments like police, banks, tax, telecom to track any terror suspect and incident.

The Cabinet Committee on Security has already given an in-principle nod to the ambitious project which aims to bring together police and security agencies for a real time exchange of data across the country, sources said.

The Home Ministry has proposed that the amount will be spent over about four years in different phases to connect data providing organisations and users besides developing a legal structure through which information can be accessed by the NATGRID, they said.

In the first phase, the Ministry plans that 10 user agencies and 21 service providers will be connected in 26 months, while in later phases about 950 additional organisations will be connected in 12 months and another over 1,000 organisations in the subsequent 12 months.

The Cabinet Committee on Security has approved budgetary allocation of Rs 50 crore on April 12 last year for commencing preliminary activities for establishment of NATGRID with the direction that a Detailed Project Report will be prepared which has been done by the Home Ministry.

All the ground work notwithstanding, a number of top bureaucrats are still not clear about the concept of an umbrella database which will be gathered from different organisations, its security, possible misuse and privacy issues, the sources said.