India’s border patrol agency has officially launched a data center in New Delhi that will support its new internal network that connects nearly 200,000 of the agency’s staff.

The Border Security Force’s Intranet Prahari Project will connect all frontiers and battalions in the country with each other, The Times of India reported. The country’s home minister P. Chidambaram said the project would enable staff to access their personal and administrative data from any location as well as move the agency toward a paperless future.

"It has many, many applications and one of the greatest interest of the personnel will be that all their personal information will be available … like salary allowances, tax deductions and leaves," Chidambaram said.

"Introducing a computer-based system should not mean that papers will continue to be generated,” he added. “Once records are available in the digital form, that must mean end of paper form."

The intranet project cost Rs 2.29bn (about US$56.5m). The company implementing the project is NIIT Technologies. It has already trained about 20,000 personnel to use the system.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police agency is evaluating a similar project, the home minister said.