In a daylong closed-door meeting, Joint Secretary (North East) of Union Home Ministry, Naveen Verma, recently reviewed the internal security and ways to tackle militancy in the north Eastern states with the director general of police and state home secretaries of the region.
The review was done against the backdrop of the killing of 13 people in Assam's Sonitpur District by National Democratic Front of Bodoland militants. The meeting stressed the need for modernization of State police forces, revamping the intelligence gathering mechanism, enhanced focus on border management to check cross-border activities and proper rehabilitation of the surrendered militants to encourage others to follow suit.
They also discussed the need for setting up of more police stations, particularly in the remote areas, greater emphasis on training and sanctioning of additional posts. Naveen Verma said that the surrendered militants are being given training and are paid stipend for the training period. They are also given Rs.1.5 lakhs as fixed deposit as salary to be given after 3 years.
The meeting also agreed to further strengthen sharing of regional level intelligence to check movement of militants in different states and also decided to hold such review meetings every quarter in different state capitals of the north east. Meanwhile, reacting to the Sonitpur district incident, Khagen Sharma, Additional DGP (Special Branch) of Assam, said that the NDFB carried out the attacks on soft targets in a desperate bid to draw attention to its 18th raising day. "What the NDFB has done is not indicative of its strength, but its frustration as their number are very few. They killed people in remote areas as it is a soft target. They wanted to do in some other places they could not do that''s'' why they shift their focus to the interior areas," Sharma said.
