IB's snoop HQ ready for occupation

IB's snoop HQ ready for occupation
KOTA NEELIMA

NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 3: The Intelligence Bureau's new building is just about ready at Sardar Patel Road. The four-wing, 400-room building built at a cost of around Rs 100 crore took five years to complete.

But, moving into the new building -- where a network of underground optical fibers from all ministries and from both the South and North blocks would come and converge -- would mean that the IB would have to vacate around 100 offices located in New Delhi.

The first phase would involve moving out of 35 offices, including Dholpur House on Man Singh Road, an office in R.K. Puram Sector-4, their branch in Jeevan Bharati building in Connaught Place and other administrative and laision units.

The new centre would give the IB an edge over the concept of having all the Central Police Organisation's (CPO's), including the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in the Central Government Office (CGO) in Lodhi Estate. ``We cannot work in a market place like CGO complex,'' a senior IB official said.

Entry to the state-of-the-art edifice would be by ultra-violet fingerprinted identity cards and second-level checking would be through electro-magnetic identification.

But, the building shares a problem with the rest of Delhi. There is major water scarcity, enhanced by the fact that there is no facility for underground tanks as there is a underground shooting range already in use there. The water problem has been exacerbated because of a five-star hotel located next to it.

Though plans for the building were sanctioned in 1979, the work could not start till about five years ago because of lack of funds and also the architectural need for not making it look out of place next to hotels in the neighborhood.

The IB building, in fact, looks like an extension of the hotel, with the same Kota stone, paralleling facade and opulence. The IB building may also be one reason why most foreign dignitaries coming to India, including US President Bill Clinton, stayed nearby.

Information

The mode of information collection has been brought up to date. The Prime Minister in Delhi would get to know about any incident in the country within 15 minutes. At the bottom of the info-gathering hierarchy are IB's `field men', who inform a receiving centre to be set up in all major centers. They beam the information to Delhi through satellites. This takes about eight to 10 minutes. Then it is formatted and sent through satellite connection to the PM in another 15 minutes.