Centre’s meeting with state heads fails to break impasse over
anti-terror body.
The chief ministers’ one-day conference on the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) saw no change in the stand of the state bosses, who joined hands to virtually shoot down the idea. Their message was that the central government should restrict itself to providing funds and logistical support and leave the rest to the states, as law and order is primarily a state subject.
Adopting different levels of criticism, all of them, including West Bengal chief minister Mamata Bannerjee, demanded that the office memorandum notifying the setting up of the NCTC be either withdrawn or kept in abeyance. “The proposed NCTC needs a total overhaul, and for this I suggest that a smaller sub-committee of chief ministers be set up. The NCTC as has now been identified should be kept in abeyance,” said Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
The strongest attack on the proposed law came from Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who described the NCTC as a Frankenstein’s monster, and referred to the central government as “viceroys of the yore”. He said that the union government’s move is like amputating the limb to cure cancer.
Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik objected to the creation of the NCTC under a secret intelligence agency like the Intelligence Bureau. “Such an organisation should not be part of a secret intelligence agency, the IB. No other democratic country has given such wide ranging powers to their secret intelligence agencies as has been envisaged in the case of the NCTC. The job of an intelligence agency is to collect intelligence only. Therefore, the NCTC should not be a part of the IB.”
But it was Bannerjee who set the limits of the Centre’s role in the context of the NCTC controversy. “The primary role of the central government should be to provide funds and other logistical support to the state to equip them with modernised police force and strong intelligence agencies,” she said.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar objected to the manner in which the NCTC has been set up by an executive order. “If at all such an outfit is to be created then it must be set through legislation in the parliament,” he said.
Akhilesh Yadav, the newly elected Uttar Pradesh chief also joined the chorus of non-Congress chief ministers opposing the setting-up of the NCTC. “Through the National Investigating Agency, the central government has already made inroads into the crime investigating powers of the state government. After the NCTC comes into operation, it will also take over the operational functions. Soon there will be a situation where the state governments would not have any role either in operations or investigation into law and order matters that are the exclusive domain of the state governments,” he said.
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