Home Minister Amit Shah on August 18 asked the police chiefs of border States to keep strict vigil on demographic changes and radicalisation in border districts. He said the soon-to-be-launched 5G technology should be used to strengthen the security system, and a presentation was made on emerging challenges around the technology.
Mr. Shah addressed over 600 police officers on the second day of the National Security Strategies Conference organised by the Intelligence Bureau.
The IB made a presentation on the rising Muslim population in the border districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Mr. Shah said that the Director General of Police in border States should ensure that technological and strategic information percolates down the police hierarchy.
He said States should give priority to national security issues. “This is the fight for the future of the country and the youth, for which we have to fight together in one direction and win at any cost,” Mr. Shah said.
The Minister said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, considerable success had been achieved in eliminating the three thorny internal security issues affecting the country — terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir, insurgency in the northeast, and Left Wing Extremism (LWE).
He said the National Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), developed for the first time in the country, should be used in grassroot level policing for better investigation.
Mr. Shah said the Central government was preparing a database of different types of crimes. “For the first time, with a scientific approach, so much work has been done on so many fronts simultaneously,” he said.
He said intelligence agencies should change their approach. “The basic principle of a modern intelligence agency should not be ‘need to know’, but ‘need to share’ and ‘duty to share’ because we will not get success unless the approach changes,” he said, adding that other than technology, equal thrust should be given to the use of human intelligence.
The two-day conference covered 11 sessions. Some of the topics discussed were counter terror and counter radicalisation; challenges of Maoist overground and front organisations; cryptocurrency; counter-drone technology; cyber and social media surveillance; protection of islands, ports; emerging challenges due to 5G technology and demographic changes; growing radicalisation in border areas; and drug trafficking.
