New Delhi, May 6
With Chief Ministers strongly opposed to the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) in its current form, the Home Ministry has no option but to remove the anti-terror body outside the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and to have a mechanism for mandatory coordination between central agencies and state police forces.

Home Minister P Chidambaram made it abundantly clear that his ministry would work on removing the biggest hurdle in forming the anti-terror body in his concluding remarks at the Chief Ministers’ conference that were released officially today.

On being asked by so many CMs as to why NCTC was placed under the IB, he said, “Certainly this matter deserves re-examination and we will certainly re-examine it... I may recall, when I stood at this very podium in December 2009, I did not propose that the NCTC should be located in the IB. In fact, the new security architecture was certainly more ambitious but did not propose that it should be located in the IB."

One of the possible options is splitting the work of the NCTC-type body. A counter- terror body with central command could have access to IB databases on suspects, informers, friends of suspects and financiers for analysis. Operations could be handed over to the National Investigative Agency (NIA) formed after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Since the NIA was formed under an act of Parliament, Chief Ministers would have no objections to it.

The second contentious issue is of having only joint operations of central forces and state police forces. The CMs, even those of Congress and UPA allies-ruled states, made it clear that the NCTC type-body could not carry out independent operations -- arrests or detentions of suspects -- in states without prior information to the state DGP.

One of the options being studied is the possibility of forming small nodes of the NCTC type-body in states. These would have a dedicated unit of the state police force attached with the central agency team. As most state capitals already have a small central agency team, staffing the nodes would not be problem.

The joint team would be kept in the loop on all information and would simultaneously keep the state DGP informed. Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was among those who suggested joint training of state and central forces at the meeting.

Freeing the counter-terrorism body from the control of the IB could break the logjam as well as benefit the IB. Experts point out that the dual role of the now-scuttled NCTC proposal would have risked IB operations -- till now clandestine - and brought them under court scrutiny.