With the states’ performance apparently dismal in gathering intelligence for the nodal Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) to counter terror threats, Union home minister P. Chidambaram has asked chief ministers of all states to personally visit the state subsidiary MAC offices “at least once a year” to review its functioning.
Notably, the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre has been envisaged to subsume the existing MAC and SMAC set-up once it is in place. However, the NCTC proposal has been hanging fire after being shot down by chief ministers of at least a dozen states.
Asking CMs to take the lead in strengthening the state intelligence machinery, Mr Chidambaram has made a suggestion that “chief ministers of all states should visit their SMAC office at least once a year” to know the kind of work it is doing.
Putting a question mark on the functioning of the state intelligence set-ups — represented through the SMACs — the MHA had noted that 97 per cent intelligence inputs available to MAC are coming only from Central agencies and the remaining three per cent come from states. “This implied that even though states were gathering intelligence and sharing it with their own agencies they are yet to bring them to the MAC/SMAC forum,” an MHA note says.
More than a dozen CMs have opposed the proposed NCTC in its present form where officers of Central agencies, including the IB, will be given powers of arrest and search in terror-related cases.
However, the MHA has defended its move to give enhanced powers to the NCTC, citing MAC statistics which show that the state intelligence machinery is weak.
But these statistics have been contested by the non-Congress-ruled states. During the CMs’ meet on internal security in April, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi alleged SMAC has actually been reduced to a “get-together of various agencies” which is exhausting the energies of state police forces through “repeated wildgoose chases”.