Guwahati, Jan. 12: After earning the dubious distinction of being one of the most bombed cities in the country, Guwahati will be finally brought under the Unified Command structure.

A senior police official said the home department would make an official announcement after Bihu.

Though counter-insurgency operations in the state is planned and executed by the three-tier Unified Command — a joint formation of state police, paramilitary forces and the army — the city was kept out of its purview as there was not much presence of militants when the security structure was conceived. The joint formation is headed by chief minister Tarun Gogoi.

“Urbanisation of terrorism in the recent past has forced the government to extend the purview of the Unified Command to Guwahati, which was by and large peaceful till the militants changed their strategy from direct combat with the security forces to planting bombs in busy populated areas,” the official said.

In the past, on several occasions, there were proposals to bring the city under the Unified Command whenever Guwahati witnessed any militant strike, which had the intensity to shake the administration. However, the proposals were subsequently shelved as “a knee-jerk reaction,” a senior bureaucrat who retired recently said.

Another reason, he said, was the opposition from the police top brass “as they wanted to retain their stranglehold over Guwahati which has its own importance as the gateway to the seven sister states.”

Sources said now with the “serialisation” of militant strikes in the city, the police were held responsible for each one of them, “without a partner to share the accountability factor”.

The police are no longer opposed to Guwahati being taken over by the Unified Command “as this would mean that in event of any militant activity thereafter, it would be collective responsibility of all the constituents of the formation”.

Under the Unified Command, the army heads the counter-insurgency operation while the police and paramilitary forces mainly play a supportive role. The Unified Command was highly successful in flushing out militants from its traditional rural base.

Dispur also decided to rush in additional forces from “peaceful” districts of the state to intensify security in the city. Apart from this, the state government has also moved the Centre for deployment of additional forces of CRPF.

There are less than 1,400 policemen deployed in the city with a 15 lakh-odd population.

“The government has agreed in principle to hand over the city to the Unified Command to give more teeth to the area domination exercise in and around Guwahati,” the police official said.

Since 2002, the state has witnessed 610 cases of bomb blasts. Guwahati has been the target in most of the cases.

The deadliest of these were the serial blasts on October 30 last year when three explosions killed more than 85 people and wounded nearly 300.

The serial blasts today figured in the Assembly with forest and tourism minister Rockybul Hussain stating that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the state government to investigate the October 30 blasts has found “concrete evidence” of the involvement of Ranjan Daimary, the former chief of the National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) in the incident.

Expressing shock over Daimary’s alleged involvement, the NDFB expelled him, replacing him with B. Sungthgra as its new chief.

The official said investigations were on to find out whether Ulfa commander-in-chief Paresh Barua and any fundamentalist groups were behind the carnage.

Though the involvement of some NDFB cadres has already been established, this is the first time that the government has hinted at probing the Ulfa angle in the massacre.