With the National Security Adviser office and other stakeholders holding serious reservations over home minister P. Chidambaram’s proposal to have an all-powerful National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), a diluted version of the centre yet to be set up will be placed before the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) on Thursday.
A year after taking charge, Mr Chidambaram had proposed that “some agencies which include the NIA, NTRO, JIC, NCRB and the NSG were to be brought under the NCTC. He had proposed that the NCTC will be the umbrella unit in all matters related to terrorism.
However, the NSA office is not keen to let go of the agencies reporting directly to it. The agencies, reporting directly to the NSA include Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), NTRO.
Following concerns raised by the stakeholders, the home ministry has now decided to revise its earlier proposal and suggested that the NCTC “will take over the work of the multi-agency centre’’ which at present gathers intelligence from nearly two dozen agencies. The NCTC will be headed by an officer of the rank of additional director-general of police who will report to the home ministry. The NCTC will utilise the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) database for credible inputs.
Incidentally, MAC also gather intelligence from the state intelligence agencies.
The home ministry’s ambitious plan also suggested “re-positioning” of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Aviation Research Centre (ARC) and CBI. It wanted a “way to place them under the oversight of the NCTC in the terrorism-related cases”. This also apparently fell through as the PMO apprehended “major turf war”, sources said. The RAW falls under the Cabinet Secretariat and reports to the Prime Minister.
What is being seen as a positive step though is that the NCTC will be responsible for not letting the actionable intelligence go unnoticed, which has resulted in blamegames many a times after a terrorist strike.