Patna: All police stations in the state will go paperless by the end of June 2019.

The state police headquarters is likely to sign an agreement with a firm, which will be assigned the work of installing software, hardware, training of personnel, operation and maintenance, handholding and redressal of issues related to the ambitious project.

The proposal that would be completed at an estimated cost of about Rs 236 crore has been submitted to the finance department by the state police headquarters for approval.

"Once the proposal gets the nod of the finance department, we will sign an agreement with the company concerned," said inspector-general (provision and budget) Kamal Kishore Singh.

He said the work on the project would start from June this year and would be completed by the end of June next year. "The police stations in Bihar will go paperless after the completion of the project," the IG said, adding that digitisation of crime records of the past 10 years would also be undertaken under the project.

Patna and Nalanda districts have been selected as pilot project.

"Based on the experiments in the two districts, certain modifications, if required, will be done and then the work will start in the remaining districts of the state," Kamal Kishore told The Telegraph.

On Saturday, IG Kishore visited Saran to assess the work being undertaken in the district under the Criminal and Crime Tracking Networking System (CCTNS) of the central government. He asked Saran superintendent of police Hari Kishore Rai to expedite the work. Sources said the Centre has provided funds for carrying out the work under CCTNS and the state would also release the matching grant soon.

Last year, chief minister Nitish Kumar had assured Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the police stations across Bihar would start registration of FIRs online by the end of next July.

However, the much ambitious project to connect all the police stations with the police headquarters couldn't achieve the desired results.

A senior police officer posted at the headquarters said: "Had the project under CCTNS been completed within the stipulated time, people would have benefited."

Under the CCTNS scheme, the police stations will not only register FIRs online but switch over to maintaining station diaries online.

"All other manual process of maintaining official crime records and registers will be abolished," the officer said.

The state has a total of 1,064 notified police stations out of which only 894 have been covered under the CCTNS.