DP Sinha likely to head NCTC

Additional director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) DP Sinha is likely to head the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) which is expected to be established in the next few weeks. Rajesh Ahuja reports.

Additional director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) DP Sinha is likely to head the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) which is expected to be established in the next few weeks.

Home minister P Chidambaram is likely to announce the details about its structure and budgeting in a couple of days.

After much wrangling between the stake holders over the NCTC, the cabinet committee on security (CCS) cleared a much watered down version of the proposed body last Thursday.

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“Most of the details have been hammered out. Barring a last minute change DP Sinha’s name as NCTC chief has been finalised,” said an official on the condition of anonymity.

According to sources, the new version of NCTC will have permanent secretariat headed by Sinha who is 1979 batch officer of Manipur-Tripura cadre. Sinha is heading operations wing of the IB at the moment. The NCTC chief will be assisted by at least three joint director rank officers from the IB.

More than dozen intelligence and investigation agencies and paramilitary forces will send a permanent liaison officer to the NCTC. They will come on deputation to the NCTC. The joint director (operations) will liaise on behalf of IB with NCTC.

“It will be like Bureau of Immigration (BoI) which is part of IB but acts as independent agency. The idea is to have a 247 counter-terror agency which will act on any input in real time. In MAC, though various agencies sit together once in a day but it cannot enforce any coordinated action on the basis of any intelligence input. But the NCTC will have the power to enforce action,” explained a source.