The move comes amid concerns about rising cybercrime and hacking incidents. Earlier in September, five million usernames and passwords of Google were reported to have been leaked online by Russian hackers.

Sources said the email policy seeks to protect critical government data and aims to make it mandatory for government offices to communicate only on NIC platform and not commercial email services Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc.

Earlier this month, Communication and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has also said that a system of secured email is being established to increase its usage within the government by March, 2015.

Governments globally have also been trying to secure their official communication post fallout of the Snowden saga, which contended the US intelligence agencies used a secret data-mining programme to monitor worldwide Internet data to spy on various countries, including India.

Also Read:

India's Mission To Mars: Most Revolutionary Pieces Of Technology Used

Indian Among Countries That Ask Google For Users' Data Most Often