By IANS
New Delhi : Denying any failure of central intelligence agencies in the serial bombings in Uttar Pradesh last week, Home Minister Shivraj Patil Monday asked the states to beef up intelligence gathering activities of their police forces.
The home minister first made a suo motu statement in the Lok Sabha on Friday’s bombings in Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow in which 13 people were killed. The speaker then agreed to the demand of the opposition to allow an impromptu discussion on the issue with Patil replying to it.
The minister told the house, “There were two blasts in the Varanasi court premises in which nine persons including two lawyers and a 12-year-old boy died and 56 injured. Two of them are reported to be critical.
“In the court premises in Faizabad, there were two blasts in which four persons lost their lives and 24 were injured.”
In Lucknow there was a low-intensity blast and another explosion was avoided after defusing a bomb.
Replying to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s charge that the central intelligence agencies were to be blamed for the blasts, Patil said: “When Sankat Mochan temple blasts took place in Uttar Pradesh (on March 7 when Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav was ruling the state), I asked whether any agency was to blame for any negligence and the then chief minister had said this is not the time for blaming anyone. Now is the time to work together.”
He, however, added, “But some steps surely need to be taken. First we have to strengthen policing. We are spending a lot of money and the state governments are getting enough funds for policing.”
The home minister tried to absolve the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) of any failure and instead asked the states to strengthen their special branches of their respective police forces.
“RAW collects international intelligence and IB gives us national intelligence. But every state has a special branch (of police) that has to collect intelligence.
“RAW and IB give information and directions with the larger perspective in mind. I cannot give details. But special branch has to work.
“We give the IB lot of funds and equipment. But that is not enough, we have to strengthen the state police forces and special branches,” said Patil.
He added: “But the problem is police officers don’t want to go to the special branch because they don’t get any credit.”
The home minister also underlined the need to improve the police-population ratio and called upon people to be alert and cooperate with police.
Replying to Leader of Opposition L.K. Advani’s demand for a federal investigating agency, Patil noted, “They (the Bharatiya Janata Party-BJP) say what have you done. We can’t send our police. Nor can we conduct any investigations there. The chief ministers’ conference is coming up in 10-15 days and we will take up this issue. Experts’ reports say we have to think in terms of federal crime and federal investigation. But this is not acceptable to all the states.
“So we have to think and devise some system. We have to discuss. But till the time we have a consensus nothing can be done because ours is a federal system and nothing should be done to harm that.”