JOIN USIt would be naive to imagine that the closing of ranks of chief ministers of a number of states at their meeting in Delhi on Monday was on the basis of their opposition to the Central government’s proposal to set up a National Counter-Terrorism Centre or to the powers envisaged for the body. Politics is as much about unstated intentions as about articulated positions. In this case the unsaid ideas are perhaps more important than the stated complaints about the NCTC encroaching on the powers of state governments. It is not just the NCPC that is being opposed. Amendments proposed to the legislations governing the Railway Protection Force and the Border Security Force are also claimed to go against federal relations. It was in fact when Mamata Banerjee was the railway minister that the amendment to the RPF Act was proposed. The Trinamool Congress had also supported the NCTC idea when it was first mooted.
So the opposition to the NCTC and other ideas is more about finding a common ground among chief ministers and parties to challenge the UPA government which is politically weakening. Whenever the Central government has been seen to be weak states have historically tried to assert their strength. The attack on the Centre on Monday was led by the strongest chief ministers, Tamil Nadu’s J Jayalalitha, Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik and Gujarat’s Narendra Modi. The axis between Jayalalitha and Naveen Patnaik, which may possibly include Mamata Banerjee also in future, may evolve into a two-tier strategic alliance against the UPA government with the BJP-led NDA working with or behind it. The country may also witness the new line-up in the Presidential elections scheduled for July. In the view of the main national opposition party, the BJP, which is also not politically strong except in pockets, a loose confederation of non-Congress parties will have a better tactical advantage in fighting the UPA in 2014.
Therefore the proposed separate meeting between the Centre and the states on the NCTC on May 5 will not settle the controversy over the proposal. It is unlikely that the differences over the NCTC or any other issue over which a centre-state angle exists or can be invented, like the important Goods and Service Tax (GST), will be resolved in the near future. This is unfortunate because some of these issues are important for the nation. But national interests are often politically interpreted.