In what is being viewed as a direct fallout of the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case that has triggered a massive confrontation between the CBI and the Intelligence Bureau, the government has now decided to make it mandatory for the intelligence agency to seek written approval from the home minister before issuing a terror-related advisory or an alert to the state police.
Top government sources said the idea behind putting this mechanism in place was to make the arrangement of issuing terror advisories more foolproof so that it doesn’t leave any agency red faced in future.
As of now the issue is largely dealt with at the level of either the home secretary or special secretary (internal security) where IB merely informs the home ministry of issuing an alert either through the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) or its state subsidiary intelligence bureau (SIB). In most cases no written approval is taken by the IB from even the home ministry top brass.
Now this arrangement will change as the home ministry is of the view that a written sanction that too at the level of the home minister will bring in greater accountability and a degree of seriousness to the entire issue.
While making the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter “a case in point” a senior government official said, “Had the IB and the Gujarat police known that the matter, of issuing an alert, was in the knowledge of the home minister and senior ministry officials the entire incident would have been handled very differently. There would have been a deterrent for the trigger happy cops as well as and intelligence officials.”
The CBI is already probing the role of four IB officials including its special director Rajender Kumar in the fake encounter case.