The meeting of the Chief Ministers of all States on National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) concluded in Delhi with the States highlighting various concerns on the issue and offered different suggestions to strengthen the counter-terrorism apparatus in the country.

The Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said, “I came to this meeting with an open mind and I continue to keep an open mind and I assure you that all your suggestions will be carefully considered before a decision is taken by the Government. Ultimately, however, Government would have to take a decision.

“I think it is broadly agreed that there are two separate issues, one the need for NCTC or a similar organisation. The other is what should be the powers and functions of such an organisation, should one be created. I think this distinction was brought out in every intervention and I am grateful that all Chief Ministers maintained the distinction as far as support or opposition to the proposal is concerned and I think it will be fair to say that a number of speakers expressed strong support, a number gave qualified support and a few outrightly rejected the proposal. We will give serious attention to both those who strongly supported the proposal and those who suggested that it should be rejected outright.

“The third aspect is about the role of agency designed to do counter terrorism, in a sense this is new to our system. We have intelligence agencies, we have investigative agencies. Between intelligence agencies and investigative agencies under the traditional system of administration of law and order, we have the police but my experience in this job for the last three and a half years tells me that what we need is not simply a police organisation; what we need is a counter-terrorism organisation. I think one of the Hon’ble Chief Ministers brought out borrowing the language of the NCTC in the US, what we need is a counter-terrorism organisation that mobilises all elements of national power – diplomatic, financial, investigative, judicial, police. So we need to move beyond looking upon counter-terrorism as a police operation and enlarge our scope to make it a truly counter-terrorism organisation that will mobilise all elements of national power.

In the last two and a half years, there have been significant successes and failures in our counter-terrorism operations. “Why did we fail? We failed mainly because of lack of capacity; sometimes we failed because of a lack of timely decision. Each case has been documented; each case has been examined carefully. We document each case of success, we also documented each case of failure. Each case of failure contains within it the potential of another terrorist attack. Therefore, we cannot afford to fail. The adversary can fail ninety nine out of hundred times but the state, the Governments, cannot afford to fail even once out of hundred times.”

The fourth point is the misgivings about operations of the NCTC. It is not the NCTC which is being given certain powers, it is the operations wing of the NCTC which is being given powers. Normal operations will be done by the ATS and the state police. Suppose in a given situation only an officer of a central agency has the opportunity to interdict the terrorist, what should we do? Suppose that action has to be taken within hours or within minutes, what should we do? Suppose there is no real time between gathering intelligence or interdicting a terrorist what should we do? It is in exceptional circumstances that we have said that the operational wing may act, as far as possible by giving advance intimation and certainly by immediately providing information. But I recognise that a number of speakers are not still satisfied and they want more safeguards on this and those who gave qualified support are not satisfied with the safeguards that are built in. So this requires greater reflection.

And on the point of its location in IB, Home Minister Chidambaram said since there is opposition to it, it would be re-examined.