 "Manmohan Singh")
Calling for an all party meeting to discuss the growing incidents of Maoists violence and measures to curb the menace, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that the brutal and inhuman attack on Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh has emphasised that violence has no place in democracy.
Prime Minister pointed out that the two-pronged strategy adopted by the union government had shown some results and in the last few years there was substantial reduction in the number of incidents and deaths caused by Maoists and there was rise in the number of left wing extremists surrendering before security agencies.
“I would urge chief ministers to make good use of this opportunity to come up with some concrete measures to deal with the very grave threat of Naxalism. A number of measures have been taken as part of the two-track strategy.
These include strengthening the security apparatus, improving road connectivity in 34 most Left Wing Extremist affected districts, relaxation of norms of various development schemes in the affected areas, and the Integrated Action Plan for 82 selected tribal and backward districts,” said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while speaking at the Chief Ministers Conference on Internal Security.
The Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has called an all party meeting on June 10 to discuss the recent attack in Chhattisgarh which killed senior Congress leader along with 27 people. Prime Minister stressed that major violent attacks by Maoists and the recent incident in Chhattisgarh were setbacks that have occurred periodically.
However, the meeting of chief ministers on internal security was not attended by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalitha who was annoyed by the union government for not allowing her to complete her speech at the last chief ministers conference.
Singh elaborated that the union government had intensified efforts to strengthen the security and intelligence machinery in areas affected by Maoist violence, but there was a need to ensure that people living in areas that are affected by Maoist violence should get benefits of development efforts.
The high-profile conference of chief minister yet again brought out severe differences between opposition ruled states and Congress states as most of the non-Congress chief ministers vehemently opposed setting up of the diluted version of the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC). Opposition ruled states have asked the government to discuss NCTC in Parliament during the monsoon session.
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.
