Centre convenes CMs' meeting next month on internal security

New Delhi, March 8: The Centre has convened a meeting of chief ministers next month to discuss various internal security issues, including controversial NCTC which is stuck due to opposition from non-Congress state governments.

The meeting, convened by the Home Ministry and tentatively fixed for April 4, will discuss issues concerning the country’s internal security, activities of various terrorist organisations, militant activities in Jammu and Kashmir and insurgency problems in northeastern states, official sources said on Friday.

The conference will specifically deliberate the issue of setting up of the National Counter Terrorism Centre, which is being opposed by chief ministers like Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Narendra Modi (Gujarat), J Jayalalitha (Tamil Nadu) and Naveen Patnaik (Odisha). The Centre has already suggested NCTC would be out of the ambit of Intelligence Bureau and it would conduct any search operation or arrest anyone in any state only after informing the state police chief.

Those opposed to NCTC have been maintaining that allowing NCTC to conduct operations unilaterally would infringe on the states’powers and would hurt the federal structure of the country.

The last meeting of the chief ministers, held on March 5, 2012, had failed to evolve a consensus on NCTC, a pet project of former Home Minister P Chidambaram. Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde had said he would discuss the issue of NCTC with the Chief Ministers in a bid to break the logjam.

The meeting will also discuss the menace of Left Wing Extremism and how to tackle it in close cooperation between then state governments and the Centre.

PTI