Sahil Makkar :Livemint : Sat, May 26 2012. 1:00 AM IST
To plug security loopholes, India on Friday made operational a system that will profile and track in real time foreigners visiting India.
The move comes in the backdrop of American David Coleman Headley visiting India several times to carry out surveillance of potential targets before the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai that left 166 people dead. Ten gunmen from the banned terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba were involved in the attacks. Headley’s presence in India had gone unnoticed before he slipped out of the country.
Union home minister P. Chidambaram inaugurated the immigration, visa and foreigners registration and tracking project, which will eventually cover 176 Indian missions, 80 immigration checkpoints and 10 foreigners regional registration offices (FRROs). The system will help make the immigration, visa and online registration of foreigners more efficient, he said. Officials in the ministry said travellers’ identities will be authenticated at Indian missions and other points with the use of intelligent document scanners and biometrics.
“There will be an online registration of foreigners at the time of grant of visa. The system will update itself when a foreigner enters or leaves the country,” said an official who didn’t want to be named. “The centralized system will provide this information to all concerned intelligence and law-enforcement agencies on real-time basis.”
The system will profile and identify suspicious travellers and generate alerts about overstays and failure on part of any traveller to register with FRROs, the official said. The system has been made operational at 65 Indian missions, and the remaining will be covered in two years.
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