After being heckled in the capital, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to skip the chief ministers conference convened by home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Monday in the national capital.
Mamata had left saying the city is ‘’unsafe’’ following demonstrations by Left protesters earlier this week where state finance minister Amit Mitra was manhandled. The CMs conference on Public Order convened by the MHA is likely to see a thin presence of CMs as many of them have still not confirmed their participation to the MHA. Incidentally, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is also not expected to attend the conference this time.
In what appears to come as a delayed effort on part of the MHA, the conference will discuss the implementation of the recommendations of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission’s fifth report on Public Order. Incidentally, the report was submitted to government in June, 2007.
Notably, the MHA has also put off for now any discussion on the controverisal National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) since the government has not firmed up its view. Incidentally, Mamata was in the forefront to oppose the NCTC among the non-Congress CMs. The apparent delay on a decision on NCTC is now expected to see the CMs being called to the Capital next month for the annual conference on Internal Security. “What is the point of calling the chief ministers twice in two months. We expected the MHA to make up its mind on NCTC,” a state government official remarked.
So far, nearly eight chief ministers, majority from Congress-ruled states, have consented to attend the meet, official sources said. Apart from Congress CMs of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Himachal Pradesh, Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik and Chattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh may attend Monday’s meet. However, other non-Congress CMs like J. Jayalalithaa (Tamil Nadu), Akhilesh Yadav (Uttar Pradesh), Narendra Modi (Gujarat), Nitish Kumar (Bihar), Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh) have kept the MHA waiting for their consent.
Even the attendance of some Congress CMs like Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan) and Oommen Chandy (Kerala) remains uncertain. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah may also give it a skip.
“We hope all the CMs finally turn up otherwise the conference will lose its meaning. Law and order and policing are state subjects,” an MHA official remarked.
State government officials pointed out that some of the 153 recommendations in the ARC report may have indeed become irrelevant today. While the report talks of the need to enact a new law to govern the working of the CBI in context of a new category of crimes called ‘’federal crimes’’, the government has already set up the National Investigation Agency governed under the NIA Act after the 2008 Mumbai carnage.
But keen to press for police reforms, the MHA will discuss separation of crime investigation from other policing functions as a key part of its agenda.