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Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi
Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani would address a three-day conference of senior police officials at Vigyan Bhavan commencing on Wednesday.
The conference would explore the feasibility of establishing a federal police bureau, on the lines of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, a top ministry of home affairs official said on Tuesday.
The official told rediff.com that the conference, including state police chiefs, would also discuss crucial national security issues and perceived internal threats.
"The continuing activities of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and its ostensible links with the Students Islamic Movement of India are among the topics which will be thrashed out by the conference, which will also be attended by government sleuths," the official said.
He said the conference would review the progress made by the country's internal security apparatus, in a bid to identify lacunae and buttress measures.
Prime Minister Vajpayee would address the conference on Thursday, while Home Minister Advani would address it on Wednesday, after inaugurating it.
Significantly, a similar conference of top police officials last year beat a hasty retreat on the issue of the proposed federal police with chief ministers of non-Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states alleging that it was a measure aimed at 'usurping' their powers.
The states protested that since law and order is a state subject under the Constitution, there was no question of approving the proposed federal police, whose writ is envisaged to run across the length and breadth of the country.
"We (the opposition parties) will fight tooth and nail any attempt by the Centre to encroach on the powers of the states, especially those pertaining to their law and order," Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Somnath Chatterjee had asserted.
"From time to time, this National Democratic Alliance government tries to foist its hidden agenda but the opposition is alert and we will not tolerate its hanky-panky efforts," Chatterjee had added.
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