Tuesday night’s blast in Jaipur killing 63 and injuring more than 150 showed once again how vulnerable is India to terrorist attacks and (once again) highlighted the failure of intelligence agencies to track terrorist activities in the country. As is the nature of Indian politicians, they are back in their old game trading charges against each other. The BJP alleging the UPA government’s weak, soft and apathetic policies in countering terrorism, called the government to reintroduce POTA. The Prime Minister on his part rejecting BJP’s demand said that there are many laws to combat terrorism in the country, but in reality, the series of attacks in Mumbai, Delhi, Malegaon, Varanasi, Hyderabad, Ajmer and now Jaipur has shown that these laws are not working.

The security apparatus in the country is full of loopholes. Lack of coordination between the centre and the state governments have made India a safe haven for anti-national activities. Militants are exploiting gaps in the counter-terrorism intelligence and are taking advantage of the ambivalent political policies towards the Muslims of the country who are largely impoverished to organize terror networks in the country. What has complicated the situation further for India is the restructuring and reorganizing of the worldwide network of terrorist in the wake of the global war against terror. Prominent groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammad have stepped back allowing Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islam (HuJI) to lead the terror campaign in India.

It has been alleged that the politically appointed National Security Advisor has other preoccupations in mind including chasing the opposition political parties than concentrating on the terrorism menace in the country. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) is in charge of the internal security of India and monitoring the activity of groups in foreign countries is the duty of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). RAW’s reluctance to share information with IB, which it sees as a political agency spying on political rivals, is legendary. Unless the intelligence structure is revamped, nothing could be done to combat terrorism in India

Source: ibnlive
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