NCTC 2.0: Big changes to anti-terror agency

July 13, 2012
Chidambaram

New Delhi, July 13: Home Minister P Chidambaram's pet project, the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), is set to take-off again after being grounded and scuttled by as many as seven non-Congress chief ministers. Senior member of the Congress party and Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had also objected to the NCTC. The main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too had put up a stiff resistance and criticised the Home Minister over the proposed body.

The reworked NCTC proposal is now with the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) - the apex decision making body of the country on security issues, headed by the Prime Minister. The CCS is likely to consider the proposal in the last week of July after the Presidential election, scheduled for July 19, concludes.

The proposed anti-terror body had faced opposition on two counts. The primary objection was about it being placed under the Intelligence Bureau (IB). The IB is primarily designed and tasked to carry out covert executive action. It does not have powers to arrest and works through state police organisations, therefore, does not come directly under legal scrutiny. Placing the NCTC under the IB, it was argued, would jeopardise the IB as it would then be subject to legal scrutiny. Even senior intelligence officers found the prospect of the IB having to explain its actions before a court of law daunting and unwarranted.

Sources have told NDTV that in the fresh Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) proposal, the NCTC is no longer under the IB. The NCTC will now be a separate organisation which will directly report to the Home Ministry. The Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) - a platform to share varied intelligence inputs coming from various agencies like the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Economic Intelligence Agency, Enforcement Directorate etc. - will be placed under the NCTC. As of now the MAC is within the IB.

In addition to this, the NCTC's ability to carry out counter-terror operations on its own, independent of State Police organisation, was also a major stumbling block. Although, the Union Home Ministry had argued that independent anti-terror operations would be limited and the apprehended suspected would be immediately handed over to the local police, the States, however, weren't convinced with this argument. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and several others had refused to buy this argument. Instead they claimed that law and order was a state issue and independent anti-terror operations without involving the state police organization would violate the federal structure of the constitution. It is believed that the NCTC will now be able to carry out anti-terror operations only in the rarest of rare cases.


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News Network
April 29,2020

New Delhi, Apr 29: India's tally of COVID-19 cases has reached 31,332, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Wednesday. With 73 more deaths reported, the number of deaths due to coronavirus in the country breached the 1,000 mark and stood at 1,007.

The tally is inclusive of 22,629 active coronavirus cases, 7,695 patients who have been cured/discharged and one patient migrated.

According to the Ministry, Maharashtra has the most number of COVID-19 cases with 9,318 cases of which, 1,388 patients have been cured/discharged while 400 patients have succumbed to the virus.

Gujarat has the second-highest number of positive cases in the country with 3744 cases including 434 patients cured/discharged and 181 deaths.

Delhi's tally stands at 3314 cases of which, 1078 patients have recovered while 54 patients have succumbed to the virus.

Madhya Pradesh has a total of 2387 positive cases including 377 patients recovered/discharged and 120 fatalities.

Meanwhile, Goa (seven cases; all seven recovered), Arunachal Pradesh (one case; now recovered), Manipur (two cases; both recovered), Tripura (two cases; both recovered) have reported no new cases of COVID-19.

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Agencies
February 29,2020

New Delhi, Feb 29: Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan has said slowdown in growth is due to the current government focussing more on meeting its political and social agenda rather than paying attention to the economy.

India can still reverse its slowing economic growth by paying attention to key issues, he said. "It's a sad story, I think most recently, it is politics," Rajan said in response to a question on what was stopping India's growth which remains below potential.

In an interview to Bloomberg TV, Rajan said unfortunately the current government after a massive election win has "focussed more on fulfilling its political and social agenda rather than paying attention to the economic growth".

"Unfortunately, this drift has continued a pace of slowing growth, which was precipitated initially by some actions the government took such as the demonetisation and a poorly rolled out Goods and Services Tax (GST) reform," Rajan said.

India's GDP growth hit nearly 7-year low of 4.7 per cent in the December quarter, as per official data released on Friday.

The GDP growth for the quarter is the lowest since January-March of 2012-13.

In the interview, which was telecast before the official numbers were released, Rajan said India has not paid sufficient attention to cleaning up the financial sector and unfortunately, that is leading to the slowing growth.

"These are things that they can change if attention is paid to them and appropriate actions are taken," Rajan, Professor of Finance at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said.

On being asked about the spread of the coronavirus globally and its impact, he said there will certainly be some legacy issues in terms of business rethinking in the global supply chain.

"If it is disrupted anywhere, the entire supply chain is held ransom and companies are going to start rethinking that should we actually have these really spread out global supply chain or to bring them back closer home and how much diversification should we have. Should we have multiple production sites across the world rather than have it focussed primarily in Asia," he said.

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News Network
March 26,2020

Jaipur, Mar 26: Two new COVID-19 positive cases were registered in Rajasthan taking the total number of coronavirus cases to 38 in the state.
The Union Health Ministry had on Wednesday reported 606 positive COVID-19 cases in India including 43 foreign nationals.

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