JOIN USProposed NCTC will impinge on states' rights, says BJP
The BJP on Monday questioned the format of the proposed National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) which will give policing powers to the proposed body.
Also, the party agrees with some of the states that fear that the NCTC will impinge on their law and order powers.
Responding to Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s plea for establishing the NCTC, in which he himself has had reservation till now owing to why the proposal was left to gather dust in North Block, BJP leader Arun Jaitley wrote on Monday that there cannot be objection to having the centre but its “power and jurisdictions must be within the constitutional framework”.
He also said that the resolve of the UPA government melted after initial enthusiasm shown by P Chidambaram during his stint as home minister. “But one article by the UPA chairperson in the Congress party’s in-house journal diluted his (Chidambaram) enthusiasm. He changed the tack. The burden of his new song was that fighting Maoism was the responsibility of the states and the Centre would merely help the states in
intelligence capacity building and providing security forces,” he wrote in an article.
The leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha argued that “the Centre has already been empowered through the creation of a National Investigation Agency which investigates offences amongst other laws under the Unlawful Activities (prevention) Act. The establishment of an adequate Collection and Transmission mechanism is understandable. Why does the central government need to give police powers to the NCTC which would otherwise be under the domain of NIA or the state police?”
Jaitely’s caveat to the present architecture of the proposed NCTC is also on the ground that “the fight against terrorism can and must co-exist with federalism. It would be meaningless to debate an imaginary ‘federalism versus terrorism’ issue”.
The senior Supreme Court lawyer is of the view that the NCTC, proposed to be set up under the IB, should only collect, collate and share intelligence on terror and not get into police powers. “The American NCTC deals with only strategic planning and the integration of intelligence without any operational involvement.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre plays a coordination role. The Indian proposal is to have an agency which will have the intelligence functions and would also conduct operations. It is this power being vested in an intelligence agency to the detriment of the law and order powers of the State which the State Governments are rightly objecting to,” he wrote.
Jaitely believes that the NCTC can always coordinate its activities with the state police to launch operations instead of carrying out the operation themselves.
Mamata is positive on NCTC: Shinde
Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said on Monday that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee gave a positive response to the proposal to set up a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), DHNS reports from Kolkata.
“Unka toh mann hai (She has a positive mind) but other chief ministers are opposing it. We have to hold talks with them also,” Shinde told reporters after his meeting with Banerjee at Bokkhali in South 24 Parganas district.