NCTC gets notified

The Union government notified the setting up of the ambitious anti-terror body—National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC)—giving it power through an executive order to carry out operations, including arrest, search and seizure, as part of its mandate to be India’s main counter-terror agency. NCTC will become operational from March 1, 2012.

Coming up three weeks after the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) had approved the NCTC, the notification states that the specialized body will derive powers from the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and towards that end it has been included among the agencies that are designated under the anti-terror law.

NCTC, a fallout of the national humiliation over the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, is supposed to collect and collate intelligence on terror groups and co-ordinate response to threats. Impediments to the exchange of information has been hampering the fight against terror, with crucial inputs often falling through the cracks caused by turf battles among agencies that prefer to work in silos. Aspiring to achieve seamless exchange of inputs, the notification mandates agencies to share their inputs with NCTC.

The NCTC will draw its functional power of search and seizures under the provisions of the UAPA that allows Central agencies such powers in terror-related case, while keeping State police concerned into the loop. It will be headed by a director who will have a core team comprising senior IPS officers, primarily from intelligence agencies.

Director of this anti-terror agency will have full functional autonomy. He will also have the power to seek terror-related information from any central agencies including intelligence units of the CBI, National Investigation Agency, NATGRID, National Technical Research Organization, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and all seven central armed police forces including NSG.

Although the NCTC will work as an integral part of Intelligence Bureau and its director will report to the IB chief and the home minister/home secretary, it will have a focused counter-terrorism jobs, like similar specialized body works in other countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Israel, Russia, China and Japan.