By IANS,
Bangalore : Against the backdrop of last week’s terror attack on India’s financial capital Mumbai and threats to the nation’s tech hub Bangalore, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday told the Bangalore police that their responsibilities had increased and hoped they would live up to these.
“Your responsibilities are high. I am confident you will discharge your responsibilities,” the prime minister told Bangalore city Police Commissioner Shankar Bidari who was among the senior police officials to greet him at the Yelahanka Air Force Base on the city’s outskirts when he arrived here on a day’s visit.
In July this year Bangalore saw a series of eight low-intensity blasts in thickly populated areas. A woman lost her life and around 15 people were injured in the first major terror incident in the IT hub after the December 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). A professor from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, was killed and four injured in that attack.
Later, a delegation led by Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa met Manmohan Singh at Raj Bhavan and sought stationing commandos of the elite National Security Guard (NSG) in the state “in view of the large number of information technology companies in the state and terror threat to Karnataka”.
Yeddyurappa, in a memorandum to Manmohan Singh, sought the central government sanction for three more battalions of the India Reserve Police (IRP) for the state.
The IRP is funded by the central government but controlled by the state governments. The central government has sanctioned funds for raising one battalion of IRP in Karnataka.
The chief minister also wanted a base set up for the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) at Belgaum in north Karnataka, 500 km from Bangalore, and check-posts and out-posts along the state’s over 300-km west coast.
The prime minister told the delegation that the central government would consider the request and help the state to strengthen its security system, official sources said.
Yeddyurappa was accompanied by state Home Minister V.S. Acharya, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader H.N. Anantha Kumar, former Congress chief minister Dharam Singh and Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly Mallikarjun Kharge of the Congress, state Chief Secretary Sudhakar Rao, the state’s Director General of Police R. Srikumar and Shankar Bidari.
The prime minister arrived in the city to dedicate the International Centre for Material Science and the C.N.R. Rao Hall of Science at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research at Jakkur on the city outskirts, inaugurate the IISc centenary conference, and unveil the centenary commemoration plaque at the IISc campus.