Even a watered-down version of the proposed anti-terror hub NCTC was not nearly rejected by the non-Congress states, while the Centre warned them that the country will have to pay a price if it does not come into existence.

 

At the conference of chief ministers, convened to discuss internal security issues, which was skipped by Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee of TN and Bengal respectively, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik attacked the proposal as infringing on the principles of federalism.

 

They felt the idea was to essentially to create a "federal police" which is an "alien" concept to the country.  Stung by the crticism, finance minister P Chidambaram, the architect of the National Counter Terrorism Centre, said the opposition to the idea  was "unfortunate, wrong and deeply regrettable" and that the country will have to pay a price from time to time if it does not come into existence.

 

After Sushilkumar Shinde took over as home minister from Chidambaram, changes were made in the wake of the opposition from non-Congress chief ministers to make NCTC acceptable to them. Among the changes proposed were that NCTC would be taken out of the ambit of IB, its operations would be conducted in consultation with state governments and the central  government would send special forces only with the consent of states.