Government plans to de-radicalise programme to counter terrorism

NEW DELHI: The government’s new policy against terrorism, ‘National Anti-Terrorism Framework’ will focus on a vigorous de-radicalisation programme through religious institutions and community leaders and information extraction from the cyber space to get intelligence on terror plots.

The broad contours of the policy are ready after the Ministry has got inputs from National Investigation Agency, National Technical Research Organisation, Intelligence Bureau and Research and Analysis Wing and is expected to be laid before the Cabinet in a couple of months, ET has learnt. The main focus, senior officials in these agencies said, will be on de-radicalisation and domination of cyber space.

There could, however, be a tussle brewing as NIA in its inputs says there is a need for “oversight and accountability mechanism” for counter-terrorism agencies – something that the IB and R&AW are not comfortable with, a senior home ministry official said.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh has taken two brain-storming sessions on July 21 and November 14 last year with top officials from the ministry, RAW, NSG, NTRO and IB to discuss a ‘national framework to counter terrorism’, officials said. “The effort is to cut down on turf wars and build a counter-terrorism system which is all but the National Counter Terrorism Centre in name,” a senior IB official said. BJP had strongly opposed NCTC while it was the national Opposition. Prime Minsiter Narendra Modi as Gujarat chief minister did the same.

The NIA has asked for “serious attention on de-radicalisation and counter-radicalisation”, as per a draft of the policy accessed by ET. The NSG has seconded that by proposing a de-radicalisation programme through religious institutions in affected areas and in jails to prevent recidivism and involvement of community leaders.

NTRO has concentrated on monitoring of the cyber space and said an approach of “information extraction” from cyber space, which can provide “actionable intelligence”, be considered besides monitoring radicalization and propaganda by terrorists in the social media space. Both NSG and NIA have also pitched for a “single point/central agency” to fight terrorism – with the NIA going a step further and saying all existing agencies that fight terror “can be reorganized as divisions of the new agency.” This is on the lines of the NCTC which was proposed by the UPA government but was shot down. The NSG has also asked for a “strong law against terrorism” – which was also promised by the BJP in its election manifesto by way of amendments to the existing UAPA Act.