The minority communities often feel they are being unfairly targeted in the “aftermath of unfortunate incidents”, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Saturday, inaugurating the National Integration Council meet, which is to debate the communal violence bill.
“It is a matter of great satisfaction that in recent years, relations among various communities have by and large remained harmonious,” the prime minister observed. “Members of this council have played an active role in ensuring that people respond with maturity to developments that may otherwise flare up communal tempers. Nevertheless, we need to maintain a continuous vigil in this regard.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to the rescue of his colleague home minister P Chidambaram at the National Integration Council (NIC) meet today by elaborately listing out the steps taken by him to bolster the intelligence and investigating apparatus.
Mentioning various steps taken up by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Singh said, “The intelligence sharing mechanism under the multi-agency has been bolstered and the National Intelligence Grid is being implemented so that intelligence from various sources can be accessed and analysed to identify actionable points.”
Singh, however, did not mention the NCTC, making it evident that there are no takers yet for Chidambaram’s favourite project of creating an overarching body to counter terrorism at all levels and it still has a long way to go as other cabinet colleagues are not ready to go with the idea in its original form.
On Friday, Chidambaram had said that the process was on to set up the NCTC soon. In his speech at the NIC, he did not delve in to the subject of terrorism and rather focussed on broad parameters of solving communal violence.
Chidambaram said: “The biggest challenge is the use of violence as an instrument of protest or an instrument of change.
Insurgency, militancy and terrorism threaten to unravel the idea of India.” He also said the country still faces the old evils like communalism, casteism and parochialism. And that it was natural to focus on violent attacks of terrorist groups but attention must be given to the violence unleashed by ideologically-driven Left wing extremists.
