Hunt Bananas, Strew Skin, Slip on Them!

Instead of prudently practicing ‘look before you leap’, the Manmohan Singh Government is adept at the vice versa. Thus, it invariably lands on its face, gets bruised and battered and eventually retraces its moves. Both the National Counter-Terrorism Centre row of last week and the aborted proposal to circumscribe the Election Commission’s powers fall in this category. The NCTC can still become a reality by March 1 if the Prime Minister chooses to brazen it out, but he will have to be ready for a combined onslaught as soon as Parliament convenes for the Budget Session on March 12.

The fact that allies like Mamata Banerjee (and even Omar Abdullah) have made common cause with ‘neutrals’ such as Naveen Patnaik and J Jayalalithaa, apart from NDA Chief Ministers including Nitish Kumar, should sound alarm bells both in South Block and 24 Akbar Road. The Prime Minister may eventually succeed in bringing some regional parties around but not before some provisions of the proposed arrangement are diluted. It hardly needs reiteration that the confrontation could have been avoided had Mr Manmohan Singh talked to the Chief Ministers before issuing a peremptory executive order to set up the NCTC. Nobody is opposed to the concept of NCTC, but few agree with the draconian and intrusive powers vested in the Intelligence Bureau through NCTC, which is now widely compared with those enjoyed by the dreaded KGB at the height of Stalin’s authoritarian rule.

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