New Delhi, Feb 18 (IANS): The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday approved the implementation of the second phase of the inter-operable criminal justice system (ICJS) project during 2022-23 to 2025-26.

The implementation of the second phase of the ICJS project at a total cost of Rs 3,375 crore will be a step towards ensuring effective and modern policing. This project will be implemented as a central scheme.

"The ICJS system would be made available through a dedicated and secure cloud-based infrastructure with high speed connectivity while the National Crime Records Bureau will be responsible for the implementation of the project in association with the National Informatics Centre," the MHA said, adding that this project will be implemented in collaboration with the states and Union Territories.

According to MHA officials, the ICJS is a national platform for enabling integration of the main IT system used for delivery of criminal justice in the country by five pillars -- police (crime and criminal tracking and network systems), e-forensics for forensic labs, e-courts for courts, e-prosecution for public prosecutors and e-prisons for prisons.

During the first phase of the ICJS project, individual IT systems have been implemented and stabilised as well as a search of records has been enabled on these systems.

Under the second phase, the system is being built on the principle of 'One Data One Entry' whereby data is entered only once in one pillar and the same is then available in all other pillars without the need to re-enter the data in each pillar, the MHA officials said.

The ICJS is an initiative of the e-committee to enable seamless transfer of data and information among different pillars of the criminal justice system like courts, police, jails and forensic science laboratories, from one platform enabling a fast criminal justice system.