UP govt counters Chidambaram, says there was no police laxity

"Holding state responsible is not justified," state cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh told reporters here. He said, "There was no specific actionable intelligence input regarding a terrorist act in Varanasi. An alert was received on February 25 this year, but that was upto Dusshera festival (in October) only.

"Expecting that input to be specific and actionable even after Dusshera festival is not justified..... Stating that the state was alerted in advance is far from reality," Singh said. He said that two general alerts were also issued regarding anniversaries of 26/11 Mumbai attacks and demolition of Babri Masjid on December 6.

"Those alerts were general in nature to maintain vigil on these two days," he said. The cabinet secretary said that there was no laxity on the part of the local police.

"As a routine exercise, ghats where Ganga 'arti' is held is sanitised at 5 PM every day and this exercise was carried out yesterday as well. Thus, there was no laxity yesterday," he said.

Accusing the Centre of lacking willpower required to tackle terrorism, the cabinet secretary said that Chief Minister Mayawati was of the clear view that leaving the issued to the state was not justified.

Asking the Centre to rise above party politics, he said Mayawati has written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding adequate security at important religious and tourist places in the state.

"The Chief Minister has requested the Prime Minister to provide 125 companies (12,500 personnel) of central forces so that a lasting arrangement could be made for security," he said.

Singh said that the benefit of any input could be derived only when its specific and actionable. He demanded that specific intelligence inputs be provided to the state and the Centre should not wash its hands off by only issuing advisories.

The cabinet secretary said that there was no specific information to the state. He said that in Varanasi one company of central forces had been provided but that was limited to Kashi Vishwanath Temple only.

"The Chief Minister is of the clear view that terrorism is a national problem and stringent action should be taken to tackle this. She is of the view that until and unless borders are secure it will not be possible to check acts of terrorism," he said, adding the forces should be provided modern weapons and gadgets to deal with the terrorists.