States must tone up law and order setup: PM

Laying emphasis on involving intelligence gathering at the grass root level, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday asked the state governments to pay more attention to improving their intelligence mechanisms besides filling up the vacancies in the state police.

"The states are not doing enough even regarding the filling up of existing vacancies in police and other law and order agencies or improving the quality of the state's special branches or toning up the law and order administration," the prime minister said in his address at the Chief Minister's Conference on Internal Security in New Delhi.

Stressing on the fact that without effective law and order, economic development will not be impossible, Dr Singh said:

"We must not, therefore, neglect this aspect."

Capacity building at the state level was most crucial, he said, assuring that financial constraints will not be allowed to come in the way.

"I also recommend to you to pay more attention to improving the software needed for the maintenance of peace. I mean by this, improving intelligence generation and collection, as also the overall strengthening of your intelligence mechanism," he said.

The prime minister said: "Unless the beat constable is brought into the vortex of our counter-terrorist strategy, our capacity to pre-empt future attacks would be severely limited."