Jayalalitha opposes Centre's bid to revive NCTC

A day after crossing swords with the Centre at the National Development Council meeting,  AIADMK supremo and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha on Friday stoutly opposed what she termed a “renewed move to set up the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) under the Union Home Ministry.

Several chief ministers, “including myself,” have already opposed the idea of NCTC “emerging as a single point of control for counter-terrorist measures” at the special conference convened by the Prime Minister in May 2012, Jayalalitha pointed out in a letter to Manmohan Singh on this issue on Friday.

Referring to a proposal to set up an “operations division” under the NCTC with powers of arrest and seizure, and with freedom to operate “independent of the State Police” was completely unacceptable to even chief ministers of Congress-ruled States, Jayalalitha said.

Reiterating her earlier points for rejecting the NCTC as mooted by the previous home minister (P Chidambaram), which was now sought to be again revived by his successor, Sushilkumar Shinde, the chief minister urged Singh to “communicate” to all states the draft of any new proposal for setting up the NCTC.  “The finalisation of any such initiative may be done only after completing the process of consultation with all the states,” Jayalalitha added.