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Explosions expose govt's intel failure, says oppn

The twin-blasts in Hyderabad rocked both houses of Parliament on Friday with principal opposition party, the BJP slamming the government for not doing enough in addressing the threat from terrorists.

Updated on: Feb 23, 2013, 02:48:42 IST
Hindustan Times | By , New Delhi
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The twin-blasts in Hyderabad rocked both houses of Parliament on Friday with principal opposition party, the BJP slamming the government for not doing enough in addressing the threat from terrorists.

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Leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley asked what steps had the government taken to protect the nation from such strikes after the executions of Guru and Ajmal Kasab. His Lok Sabha counterpart Sushma Swaraj said the twin blasts were a "massive failure" on the part of the government.

Moving to specifics, Jaitley spoke about entrusting intelligence agencies with just matter of national security, tracking down particular terror modules and making the war on terror an uninterrupted one. Jaitley's comments on intelligence agencies come in the wake of Delhi police investigating a case into his phone-tapping.

In Lok Sabha, Swaraj said that the Hyderabad twin blasts were a "massive failure" as the terrorist strike happened despite "intelligence alert."

"The home minister says there was intelligence information that was passed on to states. If there were alerts and the attack was carried out and innocent people were killed... then there is a massive failure," she said.

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"The test for intelligence agencies was to infiltrate such terror modules and tackle it in future" Jaitley pointed out.

"My suggestion to the government would be that we can indulge in colour and political aspect of terrorism but we would be wasting time," he said. He said other countries that had faced terrorism have been able to handle it more effectively .

"We need to have more intelligence sharing between centre and states," he said.

Meanwhile, BSP chief Mayawati spoke about strengthening intelligence. "Whatever information should be sent to state governments should be sent in time...the Centre needs to take equal responsibility for preventing such strikes and in cases it needs to take more responsibility," she said.

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