A Cyber Safe India is one of the top priorities of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Government of India is fully committed to augmenting the technology prowess of India’s  Law Enforcement Agencies and creating a cyber-safe country as cyber security has become an essential aspect of security-related affairs, internationally.

The Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D) has been nominated by the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Centre of Excellence for the purpose of 5G applications use cases within MHA. 

Accordingly, BPR&D is conducting a Hackathon on 5G for the purpose of developing tools for addressing the challenges and issues being faced by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). 

In this Hackathon, 9 Problem Statements have been formulated and the Department of Telecom (DOT) with its subsidiary Telecom Centre of Excellence (TCOE) have joined hands with BPR&D to conduct a Hackathon with students, startups & MSMEs. The problem statements along with their description through multimedia content will be floated on a dedicated website https://vimarsh.tcoe.in

The Hackathon will involve three stages of ideas screening - Stages I and II shall be done in virtual mode whereas Stage III will be held at nodal centres in physical mode where the 5G testbeds/Private Networks/Labs would be available. 

The jury for all three stages shall comprise of members from BPR&D, I4C, DOT and Industry. Post completion of Stage III, the final names of one winner for each problem statement with an award money of Rs 1.5 Lakhs will be announced during the Valedictory Session in February 2024.

It would be pertinent to mention that Rs 2.5 Lakhs has been earmarked for the productization of winning ideas/Proof of Concepts (POCs) leading to further incubation/incentivisation & funding to obtain workable tools/solutions for the usage of LEAs.