Centre lost precious time, NSG sat tight

Centre lost precious time, NSG sat tight
PRIYA SAHGAL

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 4: The Government could have saved a lot of precious time had it reacted to the hijacking as per the `clear-cut' Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), say former ministers and bureaucrats who have dealt with matters of internal security. Instead, what happened was a response that was too little and too late.

According to the SOP, said former Minister of State for Home Rajesh Pilot, an IL-76 aircraft and NSG commandos are always stationed at Palam Airport for any such emergency. ``This contingent is ready to leave within 30 minutes from the word go. There is also a helicopter in all NSG camps which is kept ready all the time.''

Agrees Arun Nehru, former Minister of State for Internal Security. ``According to laid-down procedure, the NSG has to be air-borne within 30 minutes of the incident. But it's a fact that when there are periods of lull, the entire drill tends to get relaxed.''

In other words, according to procedure, the NSG should have been alerted as soon as the Air TrafficControl at Lucknow got the news of the hijacking at around 4.50 pm on December 24.

Instead, more than one hour was lost. For, according to the Cabinet note, when the Crisis Management Group (CMG) asked the NSG ``to move to Amritsar (from Delhi) in all readiness,'' it was already 6.25 pm. Pilot finds this curious given that there are NSG units stationed at Chandigarh, Srinagar and Jammu. ``It would have taken the unit from Chandigarh less than half-an-hour to reach Amritsar. And although there are only 18-20 commandos in Chandigarh, they are trained to tackle such emergencies.''

What also apparently contributed to this delay was the CMG meeting, something which could easily have been bypassed. For, according to standard procedure, an NSG alert can be issued directly by the Cabinet Secretary. Says Pilot: ``The Cabinet Secretary does not need to call a meeting of the CMG to issue the relevant orders to the NSG. He can just inform the DG NSG on the phone, the minute he hears about the hijack.''

Former HomeSecretary N N Vohra says that as far back as 1994, there was a system in the Cabinet Secretary's office that offered audio-visual conference facilities with people anywhere in India. ``It was intended to be extended to certain key Secretaries in the Government of India as well,'' said Vohra.

When contacted, a spokesman said that the Government had never claimed that there was no SOP to be followed during a hijack. But he declined to comment when asked why the SOP wasn't followed.