As the controversy over the Centre's plan to establish a National Centre for Counter Terrorism (NCTC) rages, the former Solicitor-General of India, Gopal Subramaniam, has said addition of more agencies would dilute the multiple responsibilities of State police forces.
“The most important aspect of dealing with terrorism is coordinated action and greater interaction between the State police forces and the Central agencies. In a federal structure, policing is both a federal as well as a State subject. In matters of national security and major terrorist attack, federal policing also comes into play,” he said while talking to The Hindu here on Friday.
According to him, a counter-terror hub must be set up after complete consensus, as it would have an impact on national security and the law and order machinery. “It is very important to have thorough and transparent discussion on this and bring all aspects into the public domain.”
Stressing that it was the local police which was entrusted with the responsibility of protecting the people, Mr. Subramaniam said the need of the hour was to strengthen the State police forces at all levels, particularly at the cutting-edge levels of information gathering, which happens at the bottom.
Internal audit
Favouring internal audit, based on parameters of performance, for intelligence agencies, Mr. Subramaniam felt that such measures would help in establishing coordinated structures. “We must have an internal audit to know where our intelligence agencies have under performed or how many terror attacks they have prevented. This will help in better coordination in a structured form. Experts should look at this and analyse all this from our experiences in the past.”
He said issues like establishment of NCTC needed to be debated further and felt that some of the concerns expressed by the Chief Ministers must be addressed.
“State police forces need better, modern investigation methods and they need to focus on improving their quality. Confidence in a State police force begins from the lower ranks and goes right up to the top. All State police forces should also have an audit cell to evaluate the quality of their work at regular periods.”
He said comparisons of India's police forces and intelligence-gathering apparatus with those in the United States and other countries should not be done.
“In the U.S., policemen are given containment objective, whereas in India, police personnel are meant to protect those wronged and oppressed. The law keepers here are connected to aspirations of the people and their security,” he said.
The government should ensure security for the families of policemen and quality education for their children, he added.
