NCTC runs into resistance

The newly set up National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) has run into strong political resistance. A group of chief ministers has come out in the open against the NCTC’s powers in a move that can trigger serious doubts about the effectiveness of the agency billed to be the country’s principal counter-terror body after its launch on March 1. A diverse group of CMs, including personalities as politically disparate as Orissa’s Naveen Patnaik and Gujarat’s Narendra Modi, said the NCTC’s charter was violative of the federal structure. They questioned the manner in which it was set up without states being taken on board, and demanded that the government reverse its decision. The NCTC’s opponents include the CMs of Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, HP and Madhya Pradesh—Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, J Jayalalithaa, P K Dhumal and Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The number is likely to rise. TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu also joined the protest, calling for the revocation of the notification announcing the setting up of the NCTC with the aim to improve response to terror threat. The Centre has set itself a deadline of 90 days to complete the recruitment process and make the agency fully operational. Patnaik, who was the first to raise the red flag and also instrumental in rallying his peers around, said, “My concern is the authoritarian notification with draconian overtones about law and order, among others, in which states have not been consulted.” He and Banerjee have lodged a strong protest with the PM. Besides their lament against the Centre’s alleged unilateralism, the CMs are peeved with the provision that enables the NCTC to carry out arrests as well as searches and seizures which, they say, is in conflict with the constitutional scheme where ‘law and order’ is the concern of states.