Govt to announce anti-terror plan today

ON THE TERROR TRAIL

Home Minister P Chidambaram is likely to announce his action plan to combat terrorism tomorrow in the Lok Sabha during the discussion on terrorism and internal security-related challenges.

When he was appointed the new home minister, Chidambaram was asked by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi to present a comprehensive scheme on his approach on curbing terror attacks that would spell out how he was going to tackle intelligence failures and plug other security lapses.

Chidambaram is likely to make a suo motu statement tomorrow noon and reply at the end of the debate.

Speaker Somnath Chatterjee today convened a meeting of the leaders of major political parties to discuss a tentative agenda of the House. The parties today decided to take up two issues for a detailed debate in this session. After debating terrorism and internal security on Thursday, the Lok Sabha will debate the issue of the global economic meltdown on December 16.

The main opposition group — the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) — as well as the four Left parties are all set to target the government on both the issues.

The Left will use this opportunity to ask the government to shun its pro-US policies as it feels that proximity to the US is aggravating the problems of internal security. They will attack the government’s handling of the current economic slowdown, demanding more public investment.

Even before the government has had a chance to put in place in the Lok Sabha its plans for reordering security, the Rajya Sabha is chafing at the bit to have its voice heard. Independent Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar sought a debate or a short discussion on the prevention of future terror attacks by an enquiry into causes and nature of lapses in intelligence/security: a finite query intended to get the government to make public facts and the culpability of agencies involved.

“Only if there is a clear and honest understanding of the ‘how and why’ of the Mumbai terror attack can we realistically plan the changes and solutions to prevent a future attack. The enquiry’s objective is not to find scapegoats, but rather to establish the systemic flaws and gaps that need to be addressed to prevent another incident like this,” Chandrasekhar said.

He claimed that his motion had the support of a number of MPs from across the political spectrum, including Rahul Bajaj, K Kasturirangan and Tarlochan Singh, (all independent MPs), Naresh Gujral,(Akali Dal), Mysoora Reddy (TDP) and NK Singh of the JD(U).

The third phase of the monsoon session of Parliament has been scheduled between December 10 and December 23 (14 days). But there will be two weekends in between. In addition, there will be two Fridays which are generally kept for private members’ Bills. Today, the first day of the session was adjourned after the Speaker read out four condolence messages.