NATGRID to take off soon on home ministry data

NEW DELHI: The National Intelligence Grid, or NATGRID, is going to see the light of day anytime now. To facilitate an early rollout, the home ministry has allowed its databases, the National Population Register (NPR) and Immigration, Visa, Foreigners Registration and Tracking System (IVFRT), to be linked to the project immediately.

A ministry official told ET that subsequent to a meeting chaired by Home Secretary Anil Goswami on January 6, it has been decided to undertake a NATGRID ‘pilot’ immediately using the data sources of NPR and IVFRT. The ministry officials also don’t see any problems in partial-rollout, saying the project is not dependent on first building a physical infrastructure.

“NATGRID has to link 21 citizen databases available with various ministries to provide a complete picture to 11 security agencies. Since linking databases like bank account details and credit card accounts may take some time, the ministry will operations NATGRID by linking NPR and IVFRT that are with the Home Ministry,” the official said.

ET had reported on December 7 that Home Minister Sushi l Kumar Shinde wants NATGRID operationalised before the polls.

The Home Ministry has NPR data of 117 cr persons and Unique Identification Authority of India’s biometric data of over 21.6 cr persons.

The Rs 1,011-crore IVRFT project is a fal lout of the David Coleman Headley episode when it was revealed in 2009 that Headley had slipped into India numerous times on a business visa to carry out reconnaissance for the Mumbai 26/11 attacks.

The IVRFT is fully operational with database of all immigration-related matters of foreigners headed to India. The IVRFT project, as on date, covers 134 out of the 176 Indian Missions abroad.