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Faced with frequent incidents of abduction, the Centre on Monday said if the controversial National Counter Terrorism Centre comes into existence, it would help in the long run to deal with hostage situations in a better way.
Home Minister P Chidambaram said he was not sure whether NCTC would come up or not and if it comes up, then the proposed anti-terror body should be allowed to build capacity and lay out its own standard operating procedures (SOPs) and gain experience.
"Yes, I think in the medium to long term, an NCTC would help us deal with such a situation in a better way," he said at a press conference in New Delhi.
He was responding to a question on whether the NCTC would help the government to deal with hostage situations like the abduction of Sukma District Collector Alex Paul Menon and the two recent hostage situations in Odisha.
Chief Ministers like Odisha's Naveen Patnaik, Tamil Nadu's J Jayalalitha, Gujarat's Narendra Modi, Bihar's Nitish Kumar and UPA ally and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and others have been opposing the creation of NCTC alleging that the powers to be vested on NCTC would hurt the federal structure of the country and curb states' powers.
The Centre has convened a meeting of chief ministers on May 5 to exclusively discuss the issue of NCTC.
The home minister said the draft of the two SOPs for operating the NCTC were circulated to the states would allay many apprehensions of the chief ministers who have expressed their concerns.