Create National Counter-Terrorism Centre to fight terror: Experts

NEW DELHI: As the Modi government mulls revisiting UPA's proposal for a National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) to track and fight terror, experts feel the idea may be stillborn without a constitutional amendment to separate common 'law and order' duties from intra-state, transnational offences like terrorism and cyber crime, and bringing the latter under the Union or concurrent list.
"A national debate must be initiated with states so that the fundamental way in which they look at 'law and order', which as per the current constitutional scheme is their exclusive domain, undergoes a change. Chief ministers, who have been opposing NCTC, saying its powers to arrest and search suspects anywhere in the country would encroach upon their turf, must be convinced that while their powers to handle crimes like robbery, assault, rape and traffic rule violations would be untouched, more critical offences like terrorism and cyber crimes — which have intra-state and international linkages — cannot be handled by the state police alone," former home secretary G K Pillai told TOI.

Pillai said a protracted debate, which may well span over 3-5 years, need to be undertaken by creating a council of home ministers of various states, just as it was done in the case of goods and services tax. "The chief ministers must appreciate that the state police is not competent to track and counter transnational threats and crimes like terrorism and cyber offences, and that a central agency is needed for the purpose. To empower this central agency (NCTC) to effectively deal with terrorism and cyber crimes, the Constitution must be amended first to bring these offences in the concurrent list," he said.

Another former home ministry officer, who did not want to be named, agreed that it would be pointless to "force" NCTC upon states in a diluted form. "The NCTC cannot be created with truncated powers. The solution really lies in amending the Constitution to bring terrorism and insurgency in the Union list. NCTC should not only be an intelligence-gathering and operational body but also have powers to probe crimes related to terror and insurgency. NIA should ideally be merged with NCTC to avoid any turf war," said the former IPS officer who has served in the internal security division of the home ministry.