The internal security situation in India continued to be influenced by ‘proxy war’ unleashed by our Western neighbour Pakistan in Jammu & Kashmir, insurgency related problems in areas in North-East when the new Government took reigns for the second time in October, 1999. The new Government was determined to fight terrorism and insurgency, including left wing terrorism in States like Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh with a heavy hand and accordingly initiated drastic steps to fight the menace.

The Government harped upon a four pronged strategy to deal with the situation. In Jammu & Kashmir steps like deepening of the democratic process; Isolating the militants and foreign mercenaries; and several other pro-active actions yielded significant results which helped galvanising the development programmes.

These measures prepared the climate for holding peaceful and free and fair elections in the troubled State and a popular government was put in place. Countries including the Western World highly applauded the Government’s achievement in spite of provocative statements and comments made by Pakistan.

As a follow up to the Centre's invitation to Hurriyat leaders for talks with Deputy Prime Minister, a APHC delegation met Shri L.K. Advani and talks were held for over two and a half hours in New Delhi on January 22, 2004. The delegation was led by Maulana Abbas Ansari and comprised of Prof Abdul Ghani Bhatt, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Bilal Ghani Lone and Fazal-ul-Haq Qureshi.

It was agreed that the meeting was the first significant step in the dialogue process initiated by the Government of India and that a step-by-step approach would lead to the resolution of all outstanding issues relating to Jammu and Kashmir.

The APHC delegation stressed that an honourable and durable solution should be found through dialogue. It was agreed that the only way forward is to ensure that all forms of violence at all levels should come to an end. The Deputy Prime Minister endorsed the APHC's view that the role of the gun should be replaced by the sound of politics.

The APHC delegation was committed to the enlargement of the dialogue process to cover all regions of the J&K and the concerns of all communities.

After hearing the delegation, Deputy Prime Minister observed that it was Government's foremost concern to safeguard the security of all people and ensure against the violation of their rights. He also agreed that a rapid review would be undertaken to examine the cases of those held in detention.

The discussions were amicable, free, frank and fruitful. It was agreed that the next round of discussions would take place in the latter part of March.

The Hurriyat delegation also called on the Prime Minister on January 23, 2004.

The North-East with its plethora of ethnic groups, each asserting its identity obsessively, its history of isolation fostered by the British and the perception prevailing amongst its people that concessions could be extracted from the Union Government by taking to the gun continued to be of worry over decades after independence. But the Government tried to address to the inherent problems in these States. The notable initiatives taken by the Government was to have talks with the insurgent groups within the framework of the Constitution. This resulted in cease-fire agreements between the Government and the militant groups.

The ban on NSCN (I/M) was lifted as a step to bring peace in the North-East region. Talks were held with the NSCN (I/M) in New Delhi as the first step to break the deadlock.

Development of North-Eastern States got a boost with the creation of a separate Ministry, the Ministry for development of North-East Region. Prime Minister’s package of Rs.12,390 crore formed a part of this for the development of the region.

The North-Eastern Council endorsed that Sikkim should be made the 8^th State of the Council. The Home Ministry has initiated steps for the purpose.

The Government of India, State government of Assam and the Bodo Liberation Tigers continued talks resulting in a Memorandum of Settlement. The Memorandum of Settlement details the area for the creation of an autonomous self-governing body to be known as Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) within the State of Assam. This Settlement has ushered in bright hopes for the Bodo people. Besides, over 2,500 Bodo Militants surrendered with their arms and ammunitions on December 6, 2003, at Kokhrajhar (Assam) follwing a follow-up Agreement on the constitution of the BTC with 46 members having substantive power for Legislation and Local Governance. The Deputy PM, Shri LK Advani attended a special function on the occasion and addressed the surrendered militants.

The Royal Bhutan Army launched a major operation against the ULFA, NDFB and the Kamtapur Libertion Organisation (KLO) who have long since set up training camps inside the Bhutanese territory. The RBA demolished all the 30 camps of these Indian insurgent groups with a heavy hand during its fortnight-long operation launched in the 2^nd week of December, 2003. The action was in keeping with India’s continuous demand to flush out the insurgents who were operating from their soil.

The Centre sanctioned the construction of the remaining 797 kms of border roads and 2,429 kms of border fencing on the Indo-Bangladesh border at a cost of Rs.1,334 crore and the work is being completed on war footing.

The Prevention Of Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002 came into being to strengthen the fight against terrorism, while incorporating suitable provisions to prevent the kind of misuse for which the earlier anti-terrorism law, TADA, was criticised. Passing the POTA Bill in a Joint-Session of Parliament clearly vindicated the Government’s determination to wipe out terrorism. This was the third time after independence that a Joint Session was called for passing a Bill. Thirty-two terrorist and subversive organisations have been banned under POTA. These include, inter alia, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Harkut-ul-Mujaheddin, Hizbul-Mujaheddin, ULFA, Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), Al Qaida, Dukhtaran-e-Millat.

The Government defeated several covert action designs by the Pak-ISI. 161 ISI modules were busted. Major cases detected include the exposure of L-e-T network in India.

The Government also took some notable steps to reform the National Security system. It set up a Group of Ministers under the Chairmanship of Home Minister, Shri L.K. Advani to review the National Security System in its entirety in the light of the recommendations of the Kargil Review Committee. Accordingly, four task forces were set-up on Intelligence Apparatus, Internal Security, Border Management and Defence. The GOM recommended several important steps including police reforms for strengthening the National Security System and these recommendations are under implementation.

The Padmanabhaiah Committee set up for going into Police Reforms made about 240 recommendations. Majority of the Recommendations were referred to the State governments for implementation. With the Police Reforms on top priority, the Government enhanced the annual allocation to States to Rs.1,000 crore, a five-fold increase. Along with the matching contribution from the State governments, Rs.20,000 crore is proposed to be spent for police modernisation during this decade.

The Government also drafted a major Five-Year Plan for modernisation of Central Para-military Forces at a cost of Rs.3,740 crore to make these forces more mobile and operational in the field keeping in view the new strategies adopted by terrorist and militant groups time to time.

A Rs.1,800 crore non-plan scheme with the components like construction of additional jails, repairs, renovation, improvement of sanitation and water supply and living conditions was launched as a part of modernisation of prisons.

The New Government at the Centre sympathetically considered the longstanding demands of some regions of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar for formation of separate States. As a result three new States – Uttaranchal, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were formed fulfilling the aspirations of the people of these regions.

Illegal migration into India has assumed serious proportions. Therefore, the Group of Ministers set up to review the National Security System recommended compulsory registration of citizens and non-citizens living in the country. This will facilitate preparation of a national register of citizens, it said. The GOM proposed giving Multi-Purpose National Identity Cards and Non-Multi-Purpose National Identity Cards to the citizens. The Government, accordingly, launched a pilot project for giving Multi-purpose National Identity Cards to citizens. The project was launched in a few selected sub-districts in various districts of 13 States namely Jammu & Kashmir, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tripura, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Delhi. The pilot project initiated in April, 2003, is likely to be completed in a year’s time covering approximately a population of 29 lakh. Then onwards the MNIC project will be taken up on a country-wide basis for the entire population.

The 8^th meeting of the Inter-State Council which was held at Srinagar (Jammu & Kashmir) from August 27-28, 2003, rounded up the discussion on the Sarkaria Commission’s recommendations. The Commission had made 247 recommendations on several issues of which decisions had already been taken on 230. The remaining 17 recommendations were taken up in this meeting and decisions were taken on all the items so that the Inter-State Council will now take up new issues in its future meetings.

The Country has been traditionally vulnerable to disasters. Cyclones, earthquakes and landslides devastate areas resulting in loss of life and damage to property. The super cyclone in Orissa in 1999 and the Bhuj earthquake underlined the country’s vulnerability as also the need to built capabilities for handling such disasters. Disaster Management which was for long remained under the Ministry of Agriculture was transferred to the Home Ministry effectively from June, 2002, and a separate division for Disaster Management was set up for launching several major initiatives for prevention and mitigation of the impact of calamities specially created by nature. The Home Ministry, in a recent meeting, has harped upon a massive awareness generation campaign on disaster management involving All India Radio, Doordarshan, the Press Information Bureau, the DAVP and other Multi-Media set-up. It also decided to constitute a steering committee for designing campaign strategy, content development and involving the corporate sector in the awareness campaign.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Shri L.K. Advani launched the India Disaster Resource Network on September 1, 2003. The IDRN is a nationwide inventory of resources including equipment and human resources required for emergency response to calamities. The project was launched through a Video-Conferencing with the Chief Ministers of Assam, Orissa, West Bengal, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

India signed extradition treaties and agreements for mutual legal assistance with a number of countries to facilitate deportation of criminals who generally take shelter in those countries after committing heinous crimes here. The Home Minister, Shri L.K. Advani visited these countries and held wide-ranging discussions before the agreements were arrived at New Delhi also tried to create international opinion to fight terrorism unitedly and pressed for declaring such States which sponsor, aid and abet terrorism, as rogue State.

The Home Ministry also organised a very important International Conference on Fugitives with the purpose of evolving a well coordinated mechanism for extradition of fugitives who have taken shelter in other countries after committing heinous crimes.

The Union Government has asked the States to launch a special drive for detecting and deporting foreign nationals overstaying in India. This has been necessitated because of the large scale illegal influx of Bangladeshi nationals who manage to infiltrate into the country in spite of checks and controls at the international border due to the long, open and porous nature of the border. The Government is also diplomatically taking it up with the border countries.

The new Government’s effort was to further improve relations with neighbours like Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and also Pakistan. Several Home Secretary level meetings were held with these countries (barring Pakistan) to discuss modalities and strengthen co-operation in combating terrorism, narco-trafficking and regulate border trade.

The Government further extended the ban on the LTTE.

The new millennium’s first Census was completed in a record time and the data was computerized for the 1^st time in its history. An Interactive web-site for generating maps on census themes was also launched. India’s population stood at 1,027,015,247 (Male 531,277,078 – Female 495,738,169) as on March 1, 2001.

Parliament passed some very important Bills introduced by the Government which have far reaching impact on the system of administration keeping in with the wishes of the people. They are: 1) The Right to Information Bill, which was for long debated; 2) The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2003, which provides for dual citizenship for Persons of Indian Origin who are settled abroad. This was a long standing demand particularly from the NRIs; 3) The POTA was further amended for providing review committees both at the Centre and the State level to facilitate review of appeals by affected persons; 4) Constitution Amendment Bill passed to include Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Samthali in the 8^th Schedule taking the official languages in the country to 22.