The Centre is planning to revive the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), a project conceived by the UPA government in 2012 but vehemently opposed by then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.
A senior home ministry official said the NCTC proposal would be reworked to allay the fears of State governments that their intelligence gathering mechanism would be encroached upon by the Centre.
On Friday, a parliamentary panel on the Home Ministry, chaired by former home minister P. Chidambaram, asked union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi whether the revival of the NCTC was on the cards.
The NCTC, also a pet-project of Mr. Chidambaram, was opposed by Mr. Modi who in a letter to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said the NCTC was a “poorly conceived idea which tinkers with age-old existing systems” and would do “irreparable loss to our internal security apparatus.”
‘Will find a way out’“We don’t want to annoy the States and the revival would be done in a way that their apprehensions would be addressed. We will find a way out,” said the Home Ministry official. “A 2012 notification on NCTC has not been rescinded yet, the proposal is very much under consideration,” he said.
The NCTC proposes to have powers to seek information from all State and central agencies and maintain records of terror suspects, their family members in a single database. It will also have the mandate to carry out anti-terror operations, if any, through, or in conjunction with, the State police.
