Chidambaram move for terrorism centre gets cabinet nod
13 Jan 2012
Two years after it was first proposed by home minister P Chidambaram, the creation of a national counter-terrorism centre (NCTC), which would integrate and analyse inputs on terrorist threats, was approved by the union cabinet on Thursday.
"The government has granted in principle approval for the MHA's (ministry of home affairs) proposal to set up the NCTC," Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi.
Although the plan to set up such a centre has reportedly been opposed by several ministries, it was given the go-ahead in a cabinet committee on security (CCS) meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The agency, based on the model of the US National Counterterrorism Center, is aimed at combating terrorism by collecting and analysing threats, sharing the inputs and information with other agencies and converting these into actionable data.
However the CCS has not bought Chidambaram's plan in its entirety, and has instead approved a smaller organisation than the one originally envisaged.
In the wake of the 26 November 2008 terrorist onslaught in Mumbai, Chidambaram had unveiled a ''bold, thorough and radical restructuring of the security architecture at the national level'', proposing to bring several existing agencies under one roof for counter-terrorism. In the original plan he wanted several agencies like the NTRO, the NIA, the NSG and Natgrid to come under one roof.
