The recent rejection of the idea of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre, first proposed following the 2008 Mumbai attacks, by chief ministers on the ground that it impinges on states’ rights, confirms that as a people we are content to trap ourselves into circles of confusion disregarding the big picture.
Some Congress CMs also brought up the federal argument. They, of course, left the door open for future discussions. Bihar’s Nitish Kumar and Orissa’s Navin Patnaik urged “a wider debate”, while UP’s Akhilesh Yadav remained noncommittal at the recent conference of CMs on internal security. But how much wider can the debate get? It is already over two years old, and few security professionals think that the NCTC is a bad idea.
The real surprise was the BJP. For the first time the party called the NCTC a “flawed” idea, although it didn’t explain why. Gujarat CM Narendra Modi was, in fact, cavalier about it, saying the NCTC amounted to mere tinkering with existing systems.
Mr Modi also asked from which statute the NCTC would derive its powers. The answer is the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967. As for Mr Modi’s principal observation, it is astonishing that he should think the NCTC amounts to “tinkering” when so much debate has swirled around it.
The NCTC proposal — mooted in response to 26/11 — speaks of real-time gathering and sharing of actionable intelligence across the country between states, and between the Centre and the states, to trap and quash a terror plot before miscreants can make their first move. The idea is the integration of all elements of national power at all levels to thwart terrorism. The NCTC envisages an operational role for Central anti-terrorism outfits — which alone exist in any meaningful sense for now, as 26/11 demonstrated. These are meant to operate in tandem with states. To assuage the so-called federal spirit, the Centre proposed that state DGPs be on the NCTC’s standing committee and that state police forces be alerted at top levels before an operational manoeuvre is initiated by the NCTC in any state. To further meet states’ objections, the NCTC is no longer conceived as being under the Centre’s Intelligence Bureau. But this hasn’t impressed naysayers.
It’s worth emphasising that the NCTC is indeed in the spirit of cooperative federalism as we try to equip ourselves to deal with terrorism, whose victim we have been longer than most nations. But many of our politicians appear to have political oneupmanship on their minds as elections near, and seem immune to the consideration of uniting to deal with terrorism.