State to form own special force

In the wake of the November 26 terror attacks on Mumbai, the Maharashtra government is now contemplating the formation a specialised state force on the lines on the National Security Guard (NSG), which was involved in the 59-hour operation against the terrorists who attacked 10 prominent places in Mumbai on Wednesday night.
The state force will be called Maharashtra Security Guard (MSG), which will be directly under the state director general of police.
“We have requested the Centre to deploy a battalion of NSG in Mumbai till the formation of MSG,” chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said.
Mr Deshmukh also admitted that the state does not have sufficient police force. “Our population is 10 crore for which 1.5 – 1.75 lakh police personnel is enough. The state government has sanctioned 11,000 new posts in the police department and the recruitment process is going on,” he said.
However, it is important to note that the state government had sanctioned 11,000 new posts in the police department in March this year, which have not been filled yet.
Mr Deshmukh said that the modernisation and upgradation of the police force moves at a slow pace because his government gives priority to development work.
Mr Deshmukh and deputy chief minister R.R. Patil also confirmed that the state government had never received any specific intelligence input from the Centre. Though the Maharashtra leaders were not as critical as Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who has compared the Centre’s intelligence inputs with weather bureau reports, they said that the information forwarded by the Centre is always very general.
Mr Deshmukh said, “The state and Centre regularly share information. But the intelligence inputs passed on to the state are always very general. We keep getting messages like ‘terrorists might attack Mumbai and therefore beef up the security’. Now we all know that Mumbai is a sensitive place and it is always a terrorist target.”
DCM Patil also echoed the CM’s view, saying that the state home department never receives any detailed intelligence report while general information keeps coming now and then.
Following the serial bomb blasts in Jaipur, Rajasthan in May this year, Mr Modi had vented his anger at the Centre’s intelligence inputs. In a strongly-worded letter addressed to the Prime Minister, Mr Modi said, “The Central intelligence agencies are more like weather reports, which are generally vague in nature.”
Prasad Patil for The Asian Age