MHA may bring up NCTC again
With glaring security lapses coming to fore in the Bodh Gaya serial blasts, the Union home ministry is once again keen to bring the shelved NCTC proposal out of deep freeze and evolve consenus on the issue.
The top security brass are once again keen to push for an over-arching counter-terror body arguing that the existing system suffers from gaps which resulted in critical intelligence of the IM’s terror plans — in Bodh Gaya and Dilsukh Nagar — slipping through the hands of both Central and state agencies, resulting in two terror strikes in five months.
Incidentally, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar was in the forefront of more than half a dozen chief ministers opposing the NCTC saying the proposed body will hurt country’s federal structure if it carries out unilateral operations against terrorists and is kept under the ambit of Intelligence Bureau.
After the multiple terror strikes at Bodh Gaya, MHA officials said Mr Kumar may soften his stand on the issue as he has to re-look the activities of terrorist groups in Bihar for safety of the state.
“It is a positive sign that the Bihar CM has supported the NIA’s effort in probing Sunday’s attack. We hope to elicit similar support from him for the NCTC,” a security official said.
Holding the ‘’political opposition’’ by chief ministers responsible for the fate of the NCTC, MHA officials said that they hope all political parties will try to come together to fight terror. “Two terror strikes in five months shows that there are major flaws in the existing system of sharing intelligence and following it up with counter-terror measures,” a top security official said.
The officials contend that the delay in setting up of NCTC will continue to hamper the government’s anti-terror initiatives. “The sooner those oppose it realise its importance, the better for the country,” the official said.
It may be recalled that despite the Centre’s clarification that operations by NCTC would be carried only after taking the state into confidence and removal of the body from the ambit of IB, the proposal failed to garner the Bihar chief minister’s support as well as other non-Congress CMs who opposed it.
A few days before the chief ministers’ conference on internal security held on June 5, Mr Kumar had also dashed off a letter to the Centre strongly opposing the NCTC. At the conference, Mr Kumar even said the revised draft order on NCTC suffered from several “serious flaws” and “arbitrary” provisions.
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