Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Friday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him to send the Chief Ministers the draft proposal being prepared for setting up the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC).
As almost all the Chief Ministers had objected to the Union Home Ministry’s proposal for setting up NCTC as a single point of control for all anti-terrorist measures at an earlier conference, she said: “The finalisation of any such initiative may be done only after completing the process of consultation with the States”.
In the letter, Ms. Jayalalithaa said she had learnt from reliable sources about the renewed move to set up the NCTC.
Recalling the special conference held in May, she said the Chief Ministers had informed the Centre then that co-ordination and not control was the right way forward.
At the conference, the present system of a multi agency centre at Delhi interacting with the subsidiary multi agency centres at the level of the States was considered to be working well was also stressed, she pointed out.
Completely unacceptable
Further, the establishment of an operations division under the NCTC with the powers of arrest and seizure and armed with the freedom to operate independent of the State police was a proposal completely unacceptable to even the Chief Ministers of Congress-ruled States.
“The present move seems to be an extension of the ill-advised steps taken by the Home Ministry earlier,” she said.
As Chief Ministers had their feet firmly on the ground and were in direct touch with ground realities on a day-to-day basis, she said any institutional set-up should only be a nodal Central agency which would interact with a nodal agency at the State level for sharing of intelligence.
“Action in the form of counter-terrorist operations is better left to the State Police to perform. For this, a Rapid Action Counter Terrorist Force should be created in every State to function under the nodal State agency. The flow of funds from the Union Govenment for this effort should be liberal to enable State agencies to be equipped with modern means of communication and fire power,” she demanded.
