According to sources, the Administration has made a Rs 25 lakh budgetary provision for the plan during the current year. However, costs may exceed the allocation as officials want to install the latest closed-circuit TV equipment.

UT Deputy Commissioner-cum-Inspector General of Prisons, M. Ramsekhar, when contacted, said: "We'll float tenders for equipment as soon as selection is finalised."

Sources add that the proposal to revamp Burail jail security was first mooted in 1993, but the plan assumed urgency in 1998 after the jail-break conspiracy was unearthed. "The plan has been on the paper for many years, but now serious efforts are being made to implement it," said an official.

The plan calls for a fool-proof system which brings the entire high-security jail under CCTV; such a system is necessary as many hard-core criminals and terrorists, including those accused in the Beant Singh assassination case, are lodged there.

It may be recalled that one Satnam Singh was arrested in June last year and charged with attempting to smuggle PETN explosive into Burail jail. Police claimed to have recovered the explosive from Singh's possession and found more of it at his residence in Punjab's Ropar district.

According to police, the explosive was intended to shatter a portion of jail wall enabling the escape of alleged assassins of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh. Singh's arrest led to the arrest of others, including a lawyer and a human rights activist, said to be his accomplices. The accused are now under trial charged with conspiring to help the Beant Singh assassination accused escape from jail.