Bengal to amend IT laws to check cyber crime

Kolkata, Oct 17: The West Bengal government has decided to amend its existing IT laws to check growing of cyber crime in the state.

State IT Secretary Mr Siddharth told UNI here today that ''once the Union government amends the laws then we would also bring about the changes in the state cyber law.'' At present, opening a call centre in the state only requires a trade licence from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and approval from the Software Technology Park of India. The state IT department was left out of the loop.

''The proposed amendments will help us put a final stop on the mushrooming growth of such call centres in and around the city,'' IT Minister Debesh Das has recently said.

The state government was planning to develop a special software to block, if any call centre try to pass on secret data to other countries and intelligence services.

''The development process is already on and we are hopeful to get the new software installed by 2007,'' Mr Sidharth said.

UNI