The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), a state-run telecom research agency, has developed a special secured handset to be used by top bureaucrats and ministers in the central and state governments for classified intra-departmental communication.

In the first flush, C-DoT will roll out around 2,000 such handsets, once the prototype is approved by an interministerial panel comprising the home secretary, IT & telecom secretary, cabinet secretary, defence secretary and the national security advisor.

The handsets will initially be allotted to senior bureaucrats and central ministers once the secure communications network for facilitating such confidential calls between government departments goes live by end of November.

"C-DoT has developed a special secured telephone handset which will enable communication to be encrypted at the handset stage itself, thus making such communication fully secured," telecom secretary R Chandrasekhar said in an internal memo, dated September 16, addressed to the NSA Shiv Shankar Menon.