Mumbai, Dec. 30: A former RAW agent and a former governor will look into the lapses that allowed terrorists to target Mumbai last month.

Ram D. Pradhan, a retired bureaucrat and former Arunachal Pradesh governor, will head the two-member committee. The other member will be V. Balachandran, an ex-IPS officer who spent 19 years with the Research and Analysis Wing. The panel has been told to submit its report in two months.

Chief minister Ashok Chavan announced their names today, the last day of the Maharashtra Assembly’s winter session, in Nagpur.

Chavan had promised the House an inquiry by a high-powered panel but made it clear that action against officials would be taken only if the committee indicted them.

The Shiv Sena-BJP combine has demanded the sacking of state police chief Anami Roy, Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Gafoor and additional chief secretary (home) Chitkala Zutshi for their failure to prevent the attacks and then respond properly later.

The panel’s exact terms of reference are not clear but it is likely to look into the intelligence failures and fix responsibility.

The committee could scan alerts sent by the RAW and the Intelligence Bureau in the past three years and find out why state authorities did not take preventive action based on the inputs.

State home minister Jayant Patil has said the state received no specific “actionable” intelligence, only a “general advisory” after which the Taj Mahal hotel was alerted. He said the Taj had rejected a government offer for more security fearing it may inconvenience guests.

A letter from the IB dated September 24, days after the blast at Islamabad’s JW Marriott hotel, had warned the police about possible fidayeen attacks at five locations in the city — the Taj, the Marriott in Juhu, the Sea Rock Hotel and the Taj Land’s End Hotel in Bandra as well as the Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium in Worli.

Patil told the House today that the government would pay the life insurance amount of ATS chief Hemant Karkare, killed in the Mumbai strike.

His announcement came after the BJP’s Gopinath Munde and Shiv Sena leader Subhash Desai alleged that Karkare’s family could not get the insurance sum of Rs 10 lakh as the government had not deposited the group insurance premium.