Outlining its anti-terror strategy if voted to power,the Congress on Tuesday promised to set up a Permanent Crisis Management Group (war room) for operational oversight and control during terror threats or attacks. It also vowed to establish a Judicial Task Force to recommend a legal and administrative framework to ensure that national security and terror-related cases are tried and completed within 90 days. The task force will submit its findings by August 31,2009 and its recommendations will be acted upon within the next 30 days. In a document,The Congress Partys Pledge: Protecting India from Terror,released by Home Minister P Chidambaram,the ruling party promised a comprehensive review of VIP/VVIP security to ensure that the highly-trained security forces are deployed in fighting terror. The review will be completed within six months and alternative arrangements for providing security to threatened individuals will be put in place. The curriculum of Indias premier police training academy,Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy at Hyderabad,will be revamped to focus on counter-terrorism,jungle warfare and technical intelligence. Officers will be trained to provide effective leadership to the police forces in the context of global terrorism. Twenty Counter-Insurgency and Anti-Terrorism Schools will be set up to give specialised training to security personnel. Chidambaram said the Congress alone could deal with terrorism squarely and decisively but without weakening the delicate strands that have,together,bound our society for centuries. Referring to the neglect in IPS recruitment when Shri L K Advani was the Home Minister,Chidambaram said it had created a critical gap in our security infrastructure and weakened our preparedness to fight terror. There was a gap of 557 officers in the IPS cadre,which was entirely due to the neglect by the NDA government in the period 1998-2004. A panel has been set up to draw up a Police Recruitment Plan 2009-2020 which will assess the growing needs at the officer level of all police forces State police forces,Central Police Organisations and Central Para Military Forces. The panel will submit its report by May 31 this year.
