)
Calling for an all-party meet on Naxal violence, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said at the Chief Ministers Conference on Internal Security the brutal attack on Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh had made it clear violence has no place in a democracy. He said in the last few years, there was substantial fall in the incidents and deaths by Naxals.
The conference saw differences of opinion between Opposition-ruled states and Congress-ruled ones. Most non-Congress chief ministers opposed the set-up of a diluted version of the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC). They said NCTC be discussed in Parliament.
The state governments ruled opposition states had rejected NCTC because they believed that it was against the federal structure of the country and there was no need for a new intelligence gathering agency to gather information on terrorists and Maoists. The union government has now proposed to bring NCTC under home ministry and not the Intelligence Bureau (IB) as it was earlier suggested.
“It is not clear how big NCTC is going to be, what forces are going to comprise it, how exactly it is going to function and which statute will it derive its powers from. I think such poorly conceived ideas which tinker with age old existing systems rather than strengthening them are going to do irreparable loss to our internal security apparatus. The union government should come out with a white paper on the internal security situation in the country,” said Narendra Modi, Gujarat chief minister.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar also emphasised that there were serious flaws in NCTC and instead the better option would be to strengthen and develop National Investigation Agency (NIA) than to create another organisation.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram came out in defence of NCTC and said that a couple of chief ministers opposed modified version of NCTC. Chidambaram cautioned that if setting up of NCTC continues to oppose the country will pay price from time to time.
“NCTC should be ratified by the Parliament. We are opposed to the NCTC in its present state. We want that if NCTC comes into existence, it should respect the federal structure of our Constitution. The participation of states in the NCTC should not get reflected only on paper. To make it effective and useful the role of states should be ratified by Parliament,” said Raman Singh, chief minister of Chhattisgarh.
