JOIN USThe intelligence apparatus in states appears to be the worst in generating inputs on terrorism. Official figures show that police contribute the lowest among other agencies despite having wider footprint on the ground.
The shocking revelation was made by the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) that “gathers, collates, stores, shares and disseminates” about 150 inputs on a daily basis. MAC is run by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
This has prompted the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs to talk about “certain weakness” in the gathering capacity of the states.
The Intelligence Bureau (IB) under the MHA faces flak from the political leadership as well as public whenever there is a terror strike, but officials point to weak intelligence gathering mechanism, which many a times fail in connecting the dots.
The MHA has made details available to the multi-party committee headed by former home minister P Chidambaram in which it has said special alerts are issued as and when required on Jammu and Kashmir, north-east insurgents, Maoists and rest of the country.
The major contributors of inputs in 2016 till September were Defence Intelligence Agency (24.05%), Research & Analysis Wing (20.75%), Central Reserve Police Force (14.46%), Intelligence Bureau (14.22%), Border Security Force (5.98%), Directorate General of Military Intelligence (3.06%) and National Technical Research Organisation (3.66%).
Contribution from state special branches has been 11.05%, the committee report said quoting the MHA. However, the MHA appears to suggest that it still does not have an accurate assessment on why states are lagging behind in providing intelligence inputs to the MAC, established in 2002 and re-operationalised in 2009 after the Mumbai attacks during Chidambaram’s tenure as home Minister.
Subsidiary Multi Agency Centres (SMACs) operate at state level and at headquarters of intelligence wings of other agencies.
“It is a fact that contribution from state special branches is low and they were advised vide D.O. letter (March 2016) to enhance their contribution and emerge as a force multiplier for all agencies. However, the reasons for their low contribution are being further ascertained in consultation with the states/Union territories concerned,” the MHA told the committee.