National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon has called for enhancing budget allocation for internal security to thwart any terrorist attacks from within and without. “The budget for internal security is just one-seventh of the defence budget. So the problem lies here.”

Menon, however, said that there was considerable success in thwarting terror attempts despite a low budget for internal security and mentioned that 54 terror strikes were averted in 2012. Menon was replying to a query on the Intelligence Bureau alert on Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Service Intelligences trying to fan communal tensions by reviving Khalistan radicalism and targeting Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

Menon was in Chandigarh to deliver a lecture on science and security at the 79th annual meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences at the Institute of Microbiology Technology of Panjab University.

For 2013-14, the UPA Government had hiked defence allocation by 5.3 per cent to Rs. 2,03,672.1 crore while the overall allocation to the Home Ministry saw an increase of Rs. 6,767 crore from Rs. 47,681 crore in 2011-12 to Rs. 54,448 crore. According to global terrorism index, published in December 2012 by the US and Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace, India was among the top five countries most affected by terrorism. The other four were Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.