Nitish Kumar (right) with Narendra Modi at the chief ministers’ meet. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi, May 5: Consensus eluded the Centre’s meeting with the states today on the proposed National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) with several non-Congress chief ministers, including Bihar’s Nitish Kumar and UPA ally Mamata Banerjee, raising strong objections.

Home minister P. Chidambaram told reporters the Centre would get back to the states after addressing their concerns but could not say when that might happen or whether the proposed organisation would need to undergo a name change.

The idea received support from many chief ministers and qualified support from many others, while facing outright rejection from three, Chidambaram said. He did not name Mamata, Gujarat’s Narendra Modi and Tamil Nadu’s Jayalalithaa, the three fiercest opponents of the NCTC.

“We need a counter-terrorism body, whether (called) NCTC or a body by another name, whether this body or another.... I have assured the chief ministers that all their suggestions will be looked into,” the home minister said after the daylong meeting attended by 24 chief ministers.

“I came to the meeting with an open mind, I leave with an open mind.”

He said the chief ministers raised two main questions:

n Why should the NCTC be located within the Intelligence Bureau (IB)?

n Why should it be empowered to act on its own “even in exceptional circumstances”?

Chidambaram said the Centre had made it clear that counter-terror operations would normally be conducted only by the anti-terrorism squads of the state police.

“Only under exceptional circumstances, where it is absolutely necessary to take imminent action and it’s not possible to do a joint operation, the (NCTC’s) operations wing will take action... after advance intimation. Only when advance intimation is not possible at all, by immediate information,” he said. Several chief ministers opposed this.

The fears about the NCTC’s location within the IB was summed up by Nitish.

“The structure for the creation of NCTC suffers from serious and basic flaws as it has been created within the Intelligence Bureau which is a secret intelligence organisation without any accountability to Parliament or the court,” he said.

The objection stems from the states’ distrust of the central intelligence agencies, especially the IB. Unlike the CBI that probes a case with states’ concurrence, or the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that has been established under an act of Parliament, the IB has existed without as much as an executive order from the government let alone a parliamentary legislation.

Chidambaram told reporters the proposed anti-terror body could be a “standalone” one, implying it could be taken out of the IB. Asked if it could be placed within the NIA, he said the possibility “has to be explored”.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’'s inaugural speech at the meeting had been placatory. “It is not our government’s intention to affect the distribution of powers between the states and the Union that our Constitution provides. The establishment of the NCTC is not a state-versus-Centre issue,' he said.