New Delhi: More spies and police, modern gadgets and a national investigation agency are among a slew of measures India is taking to prevent terror attacks like the one on Mumbai last month, the Union Home Minister said on Thursday.
The move comes after criticism that the government was not doing enough to prevent attacks, such as the one on India's financial capital that killed more than 200 people, because there were vast gaps in its intelligence and security apparatus.
"I have found that there is a tendency to treat some intelligence inputs that are not specific or precise as not actionable intelligence," Home Minister PChidambaram told Parliament in a statement about the Mumbai attack.
"Further, the responsibility for acting upon intelligence input is quite diffused."
Chidambaram, who took over when the incumbent minister resigned after the Mumbai raids, admitted the Coast Guard and Navy had intelligence that a vessel carrying terrorists could enter Indian waters.
But the boat couldn't be intercepted and 10 heavily armed terrorists attacked several Mumbai landmarks during a three-day siege, a strike India has blamed on nuclear rival Pakistan.
India's security agencies have long been criticised for lacking a cohesive counter-terrorism plan and poor intelligence gathering and analysis.
Police are badly armed and often have nothing more than a stick with which to fight terrorists.
Highlighting poor security coordination, newspapers have reported that one suspected supporter of the Mumbai attackers who was arrested in Kolkata was in fact an undercover officer trying to infiltrate Kashmiri terrorist groups.
More than 400 people have been killed in about a dozen terror strikes this year.
Bombing investigations too have followed a predictable drill: bombs go off, police round up suspects, and then the trail goes cold.
A flurry of anti-terrorism measures, critics and opposition parties say, has come to be the government's standard knee-jerk response to any terror attack.
In September, India said it was building a new counter-terrorism centre and revamping policing and intelligence gathering after a series of bombs killed at least 20 people in New Delhi earlier that month.
But Chidambaram is promising change.
"In the next few weeks and months, it will be my endeavour to take certain hard decisions and prepare the country and the people to face the challenge of terrorism," he said.
Among those steps, he said, were decisions to create a Coastal Command to secure India's 7,500 km shoreline, fill vacancies in intelligence agencies, upgrade technology, raise new commando units and build counter-insurgency and terrorism schools.
Chidambaram also proposed strengthening laws relating to prevention, investigation and punishment of terrorist acts. "One of the bills is for setting up a National Investigation Agency," he said.
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