New Delhi:
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and his Home Minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, will again try to hardsell the controversial National Counter Terrorism Centre or NCTC to the states at a meeting of chief ministers that is currently underway in New Delhi. They will bring to the table a much watered-down version, but the chances of it being bought are still slim.
The chief ministers of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, Mamata Banerjee and J Jayalalithaa are not attending today's meet, with the latter terming the periodic meetings as a "ritual...to rubber stamp the Centre's decisions." Both have in the past slammed the Centre's move to set up the NCTC as being against the federal structure.
This because the NCTC was originally meant to have the right to operate, when necessary, without keeping states in the loop, to prevent information leaks. However, after unequivocal criticism by state governments, the anti-terror hub was abandoned last year. To coalesce support, the government has now re-diagrammed it.
The new draft proposal says that the NCTC will carry out anti-terror operations, if any, "through or in conjunction with the state police."
Also, an earlier plan to subsume the Special Operations Group - a team of crack National Security Guard commandos trained to carry out anti-terror operations - has been shelved.
The NCTC will no longer be under the Intelligence Bureau (IB), as was proposed earlier. It will, however, have the powers to seek information from all state and central agencies and maintain records of terrorists and other suspects, including their associates and family members. In a way, it will end up doing what the IB or the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) do now.
The NCTC will also coordinate and collect "further intelligence and pursue leads so as to identify and detect the terrorist or terrorist groups"
The new-look NCTC is more an extension of the multi-agency centre or MAC, a conglomeration of investigative and intelligence agencies tasked to gather, collate and disseminate information to end-users like the state police organisations.
The MAC works within the Intelligence Bureau (IB). It was set up on the recommendation of the Kargil Committee report that looked into possible intelligence failures leading to the war in 1999 with Pakistan and suggested methods to plug holes in the security establishment. Although the MAC was set up by the NDA government in 2000, it started functioning only after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack eight years later.
The states are expected to ask today why there is a need for another agency to do what the MAC is already tasked to do.
Also, some states are still said to be apprehension that the proposed central agency can be misused, despite Mr Shinde delinking the NCTC from the Intelligence Bureau.
Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar is on record saying that the Centre should trust states as equal partners in the fight against terror. And CMs like Odisha's Naveen Patnaik and Ms Jayalalithaa have expressed the fear that the NCTC will interfere with their power to deal with law and order, which is state-administered in India.
The Centre has also reportedly also faced opposition to the proposed anti-terror hub from its other intelligence agencies like RAW and IB. Sources say these agencies fear that if they are asked to carry out anti-terror operations in the new set-up, they could have to deal with territory like being exposed to courts. Right now the IB and the RAW develop intelligence and pass it to the states, which carry out the operations. Also, in its current form the NCTC will duplicate what the IB and RAW do.
Over the last two decades, both the UPA and the NDA have formed new organisations and security structures to replace old ones, but have been unable to generate quality intelligence. The Centre set up the National Technical Research Organisation or NTRO to deal with all technical and scientific intelligence, but soon almost all intelligence agencies sought to have their own wings to the task. The NTRO now seen by many as parking space for retired bureaucrats and intelligence officials.
Critics say that instead of setting new anti-terror organisations, the government must concentrate on strengthening local policing and local police stations and on proper and real-time analysis of terror threats backed by operations by the state police.