With the country facing external threats and problems of insurgency and the intelligence agencies often found wanting in measuring up to the challenge as had happened in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, a capital-based research foundation working on various issues of national importance has come out with a report suggesting overhauling of the country’s intelligence system through proper legislative measures.
After analysing the intelligence systems of several developed countries like United States, UK, Germany, Australia and others, which have full legislative support and the report of the “task force” set up by the government earlier under former RAW chief Girish Chandra Saxena on the issue, Observers Research Foundation (ORF) in its report said that there is an urgent need for the government to bring in a legislation to improve the intelligence gathering system.
Referring to Mr Saxena’s task force report, the ORF pointed out that it was in favour of “giving the Intelligence Bureau (IB) responsibility for international security operations and for that it had recommended laying down a formal written charter”.
The Saxena report had also stated similar written charter should be laid down for RAW, which mainly takes care of external intelligence. Mr Saxena panel was of the view that the concept of a viable “intelligence community” could only flourish when there was a proper coordination between different agencies based on formal written charters with minimal overlap in their functioning.
Though the government had set up the National Intelligence Agency though a parliamentary legislation in 2008 in aftermath of 26/11 attack, but it did not meet the basic constitutional mandate as referred in Entry-8 because the job of the NIA was mainly confined to any post-terror incident not taking enough care of preventing them the prime responsibility of intelligence gathering wrests with RAW and IB, which even don’t have written charters about their functioning.
The Observers Research Foundation report stated that the Constitution provides that the government should enact a legislation to have a viable intelligence gathering network.