Cuttack, Dec. 27:Tracing missing children will be a priority for police, which have decided to launch a special drive similar to the Operation Smile launched by their Ghaziabad counterpart.

A senior official said a month-long drive would be launched at police stations across the state from January.

According to the ministry of home affairs' directive, the crime branch today conducted a one-day training programme for the field officers to sensitive the officers before the drive launch. Superintendents of police, local inspectors-in-charge and other officials of all the police stations in the state had attended the training programme on the Juvenile Justice Act and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

'More co-ordinate and focused approach will be followed, while registration of the cases pertaining to missing children and its investigation during the special drive will be launched from January 1 in the state,' said director-general of police Sanjiv Marik.

Marik said efforts would be made to ensure that the FIR was registered in case of filing of a child missing report according to the Supreme Court guidelines. Subsequently, if a child has been missing for more than four months, the case will be transferred to the Integrated Anti-Human Trafficking Unit that is functioning under the crime branch, he said.

A crime branch official said that over 350 missing children were traced during a weeklong drive undertaken by Odisha police in December.

At present, missing cases of over 2,500 children are lodged at various police stations, and there has been a sharp increase in the ratio percentage of recovery of the missing children here.

Additional director-general of police (crime branch) B.K. Sharma said that over 9,000 children had reportedly gone missing while nearly 7,500 children were traced in the past four years.

'A number of districts, including Puri and Bhadrak have been successful in tracing the missing children during the special drive that was launched in December. The one-day workshop is likely to bring in a change in the mindset of the field officers to deal with such cases with utmost care,' said Sharma.

Around 1,363childrenof total 4,444missingin various parts of the state were traced in 2012. Similarly, of 5,549missingchildren, 2,381 were traced in 2013.