Kolkata: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday said ensuring security in the country was a joint responsibility of the Centre and states and the UPA Government did not pursue any discriminatory policy against the state governments ruled by other parties.
“Internal security is a very complex issue. The security of the country is a shared responsibility. It is a responsibility that is shared by the central government and the state governments,” he said at the inauguration of the NSG hub at Badu in North 24 Parganas near Kolkata.
He made the statement without referring to any particular name as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee skipped the programme.
Despite being a core partner of the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre, the Bengal Chief Minister joined a band of eight chief ministers of divergent parties to oppose the Centre’s policy on National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) which envisages setting up of National Security Guards (NSG) hubs in different parts of the country.
“The Constitution of India, which assigns law and order and police to the state governments, has also assigned the responsibility of protecting every part of India from external aggression or internal disturbance under Article 365 of the Constitution,” Chidambaram said.
“The founding fathers of the country have made the national security or internal security a shared responsibility. The government of India is happy in working with state governments. We work with state governments of different political parties and we make no distinction among the political parties,” he averred.
The Union Home Minister asserted that there was no discrimination on the part of the Centre in dealing with the problem of Maoist activities in states like Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Bihar.
“The governments of these states are not ruled by the Congress party, which I belong to, but as member of central Government I have a responsibility to work with state governments and give them all the assistance they require so that they can maintain law and order and quell militancy,” he said.
“Working together, I can assure that we can fully put down the Naxal menace and rid West Bengal of Naxalism. Our approach is the same to terrorism, insurgency irrespective of nature of the threat and which government is in office.”
Chidambaram claimed that the agencies of the Centre and the state government had ‘considerably improved’ the situation in the Maoist-hit areas of West Bengal.
He also praised the Trinamool Congress-led state government for substantially controlling the problem of Maoists in the three extremist-hit districts of West Bengal.
The programme came a day after Ms Banerjee joined her counterparts J Jayalalitha from AIADMK-ruled Tamil Nadu, Navin Patnaik from Biju Janata Dal-ruled Odisha, Nitish Kumar of Janata Dal(U)-ruled Bihar and Narendra Modi of the BJP-ruled Gujarat, among others, to oppose setting up of counter-terror intelligence hubs stating the move infringed upon the state’s control over law and order, thus undermining the country’s federal structure. (UNI)