West Bengal rolls out e-Prison project in all correctional homes

Kolkata, Aug 28 (IANS) In a bid to store information about prisoners efficiently, the West Bengal government on Monday announced roll-out of "e-prison suite", which provides for real-time availability of information and enables quick access to prisoners' details, across the state's 59 correctional homes.

"The project is being developed by all the states. But we are the first state to implement it across 59 prisons in the state. Now, there are around 24,000 inmates in the jails and all the data (of the inmates) has been uploaded," state Correctional Administration Minister Ujjal Biswas told reporters.

The model includes Prisoner Management System, Visitor Management System and e-Mulakat (Online approval of visitor) and other modules.

"The total project cost was to the tune of Rs 5 crore. The comprehensive data storing was earlier done manually. With the new system, the data would be stored more efficiently and data retrieving would also be easier," said Department's Principal Secretary Sivaji Ghosh.

Director General and Inspector General of Correctional Services Arun Kumar Gupta said the department would give access to the data to police, mainly to CID and Detective Department.

"E-mulakat facility, which is an process of online approval of visitor, is being taken up as a pilot in Dum Dum Central Correctional home and it will be implemented to other homes," he said.

The department is looking forward to early roll-out and utilisation of all modules of ePrison in the state, Ghosh added.

The project hes been developed by the National Informatics Centre.

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