New Delhi, September 17
The BJP is egging on the UPA government to implement its pending proposal of constituting a federal investigative agency to investigate terror-related crimes, a move which will, naturally, irk the states.
The BJP-led NDA regime, when L.K. Advani was steering the union home ministry, had considered the same proposal but dropped it later precisely because it would have irked the states and their coalition government could not rule while annoying the states, on whose support it subsisted.
But today BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley argued ‘terror’ is no law and order problem, which is a State Entry in the Indian Constitution.“There were no incidents of terror when the Constitution was framed, so there is no heading under terror. But the Central Government can draw its strength from a Supreme Court judgment which stated that while law and order is a state subject, it is the Centre’s responsibility to protect India’s sovereignty and integrity. Since terrorism threatens the country’s sovereignty and integrity, the Centre is fully empowered to act and create an agency to further this objective, the BJP leader said. He dismissed home minister Shivraj Patil’s plea that such an agency required concurrence of the states, since it would require a constitutional amendment.
The BJP has already urged the UPA government to move the proposal and has also assured its support to such a proposal.
But Jaitley said a federal agency would serve no purpose without adequate law to catch the terrorists and get them convicted.
In this context he rejected the latest proposal of the Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) in its report, released yesterday, to bring in a National Security Act (NSA) to fight terrorism. He described it as “too little, too late.”
He said, “Following several terrorist strikes all over the country in the last few months, a perception has gone down that the Central Government is soft on terror and
terrorists. Now the UPA government is showing some knee-jerk reaction on the whole question of
terrorists." While Central ministers like RJD chief Lalu Prasad who, till the other day, were supporting SIMI, are suddenly demanding the resignation of home minister Shivraj Patil,” Jaitley said, adding that others like the ARC chairman Veerappa Moily have come up with the NSA.
“This recommendation,” he said, “appears very strict from the outside but is actually pretty soft from inside.”
Jaitley charged that Moily had failed to understand the requirements of a legal framework to contain terrorism. He said the proposed law was not punitive but a preventive law which provided for one-year detention. NSA is hardly a deterrent for someone contemplating rebellion against the state,” he said.
