National security is an integral concept

The undiminished threat of cross border terrorism brought into sharp focus by the February 21 twin blasts of Hyderabad that caused a huge loss of life and limb, has raised questions of where and how should our counter- terrorism capabilities be strengthened.

The debate on National Counter- Terrorism Centre  (NCTC) - a long pending project has inevitably been revived and with that has come back the concerted dissent that many state governments had expressed when the idea was mooted.

The NCTC move was triggered by the perceived need for establishing a centralised mechanism empowered enough to handle both, intelligence-processing as well as the legal action against a suspected militant, in any part of the country.

The American model of counter- terrorism work introduced after 9/11 did provide a lead. The NCTC notified as an executive order, however, left some crucial points of contention unaddressed - these arising mainly out of the perception of many state governments that in the name of national security, the long- standing division of labour in India between the Central intelligence agencies and the State Police, was being radically altered.

The opposition of the states acquired political overtones and the NCTC order had to be put in abeyance. There should have been an extensive exchange of notes between the Central agencies and DsGP of the states on a professional grid, on the proposed move particularly because the NCTC in India was to deal with not only the threat of cross border terrorism but with the indigenous scourge of Naxalism and its complex dimensions, as well.

The NCTC order mixed up on many things of professional import in its anxiety to eliminate the gap between ‘information’ and ‘action’. The clear distinction between the preventive turf of Intelligence that entails use of covert tradecraft and the legal action that lies in the open turf of Police investigation evidently got blurred.

The convention built over decades of a seamless cooperation between the Intelligence agencies of the Centre and the states reflected in the continuing tradition of the annual conference of state Police & Intelligence chiefs on security being convened and chaired by Director Intelligence Bureau (DIB) warranted that Intelligence Bureau should do without any legal empowerment for making an ‘arrest’ or ‘search’ and that there should be no occasion when the central agency would need to conclude a counter- terrorism operation totally at the back of the state.

At the point of this operational conclusion it should be possible to bring in the investigators of the NIA or the STF into the picture.

In the tweaking of the script that is now being attempted, these incongruities should be dispensed with. Under the pressure of the moment, the question of where should the NCTC be positioned should not be settled without an in-depth examination.

The policy makers would do well to remember that nothing should be done to add to the ‘divisiveness’ within the security domain.

The NCTC will be concerned with the three segments of a counter-intelligence or counter-terrorism operation. The first is about NCTC providing a ‘round table’ at the national apex where information of intelligence value on the threat accessed by various agencies spread across various wings of the government, would converge. This makes for coordination amongst the intelligence agencies.

The second segment of work is to set off operational steps on the collated information in order to convert it into actionable intelligence in terms of defining individuals, locations and time frames connected to the threat.

A body of professionals of the NCTC working 24/7 with the nodal points of the resourceful state intelligence and also drawing upon the technology-enabled data bank expected to be provided by NATGRID, would try to do this.

This validates the continuing importance of Centre-State cooperation on matters of national security.

The last segment is about the relatively easier step of making the ‘arrest’ or ‘search’ that is an open police part to be done by an ‘investigation’ outfit like STF or NIA.
The first two segments concern the turf of intelligence.

The IB as the mother organisation for all counter- intelligence work handled this and if NCTC was meant to strengthen the nation’s capacity to deal with terrorism and naxalism, it should be positioned as a functionally autonomous adjunct of IB headed by the senior-most Special Director of the agency. NCTC has to be in live contact with IB and be in a position to make use of the professional cooperation with state intelligence fostered by IB over the years.

The NIA as a central investigation outfit should be available to NCTC just as the STF of the state would be, for the purpose of taking on the open legal steps. Investigators in a terrorism related case will be in need of receiving ongoing intelligence for building evidence. NCTC should, therefore, never become an instrument of a further divide in the security set up of the country. National security is an integral concept.

Those who handle information, analysis and action should be totally professional - ensuring that there was no collateral damage and that an individual was touched not on mere suspicion but on evidence.

(The writer is former Director of Intelligence Bureau.)

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