New Delhi, March 7: Having lost the political edge on Tuesday, the UPA government is likely to bow down to “federalism” and go slow on the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC).
Union home minister P. Chidambaram received a letter from Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar last week, sources told The Telegraph. The letter raised the NCTC issue and the need for wider consultations with states before the Centre takes a call on the anti-terror body.
Earlier, Nitish and six other chief ministers had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, raising objections about the “unilateral” decision of Chidambaram to establish the NCTC. Singh then directed Chidambaram to consult the chief ministers before taking a final call.
Chidambaram instead called a meeting of directors-general of police (DGPs), home commissioners and chief secretaries to be addressed by Union home secretary R.K. Singh.
Given the Congress’s poll debacle, the home minister may now be politically forced to be more malleable. Over a hundred bills are pending passage in Parliament, many of which the UPA government wants cleared urgently. If support is not forthcoming from other political parties, the government’s policy paralysis will be even more accentuated. In any case, there will be strong arguments from states like Odisha whose top officials are set to attend the meeting on March 12. Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik has also raised objections to the NCTC. Facing several disagreements besides a political downside, the government may wait for the annual chief ministers’ conference on April 16 before notifying the ambitious anti-terror body.
One of the arguments Chidambaram will face will be on the use of certain words in his office memorandum of February 3 to inform about establishing the NCTC. The government document, state officials say, only increases ambiguity and the willingness of the Centre to violate the federal principle. “The word ‘operations’ for instance is not legal; the real word is investigation,” said a state DGP on condition of anonymity. Chidambaram’s or-der states that the “operations” wing of the NCTC will have powers to arrest and search. “If you are creating an investigation agency, then you need to legislate and it has to be based on statutes,” said the DGP. Police officers say these powers are part of investigation, which in turn, is a much larger process.
However, the Centre is in a quandary. Having already passed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Act in the wake of the Mumbai attack in 2008 — NIA has powers of investigation — it has to justify the NCTC too. State police officials wonder what “operations” would be carried out by an NCTC working under the Intelligence Bureau that is not even backed by a legislation.
Corruption preceded terrorism, said a state police official, opening another line of argument.
