Accusing the Centre of behaving like "Viceroys of yore", Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the constitution of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre is a conscious strategy to cast the Centre as an "omnipresent" ruler with states portrayed as dependent vassals.
Underlining that the fight against terror requires clear vision and a strong political will, Modi said there was a need to carry along all constituents of federal polity and build a conscious view in finalising the strategy to fight it.
"Piecemeal approach with disjointed efforts will not lead us to the desired goal. Without comprehensively reviewing our past efforts and actions we would go on creating agencies and organisations and yet fail to achieve the purpose," he said. He accused the Centre of changing the "well-defined and constitutionally mandated" boundaries of Centre-state relations and said there was a disturbing sequence of events in the recent past, which revealed "centralists and autocratic mindset that militates against all canons of federalism."
"Be it proposed amendments to the Railway Protection Act, the Border Security Force Act, and the Limited competitive Examination issue and so on, the Union Government has behaved in a manner which reminds us of Viceroys of yore," he said.
He said the NCTC may look like a hasty and ill-conceived move but in the backdrop of recent events in our "body-politic" assumes significance as a conscious strategy to pursue "certain hidden goal". He said, "the assertions and assumptions on which the NCTC has been crafted, casts the Centre in the role of omnipresent, omniscient ruler with the states portrayed like dependent vassals, belittling the states which are today the real engines of India's progress."
He urged the Centre to "come to terms with current political realities and change its mindset" of seeking to capture political space through devious executive mechanisms."
He said creation of an omnipotent covert agency would revive the memories of the dark days of Emergency when intelligence agencies were misused to subjugate popular movements and intimidate political rivals. "The NCTC will do a signal disservice to the IB by distorting its original mandate; what may emerge is a mutated version which could be like Frankenstein's monster," he said.
The chief minister said an insidious interpretation of section 43A section 2(e) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act to give police powers to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) is an attempt to secure a "back door entry for this concept of Federal crime, by-passing the rigorous scrutiny envisaged for any measure that modifies the Constitutional scheme".
He said the government has overlooked provisions of seventh schedule of the Constitution (Article), which vests the responsibility of the public order, police and administration to the state and makes them answerable to the people for their safety and security.
"It is observed that whenever a serious incident takes place in any state, considering the party in power in that state, different statements are issued. Often it is said that the state government was warned of the ensuing event or sometimes