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National Security Council set up

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

The government of India finally set up the long-awaited National Security Council today, with the prime minister at its helm.

The Union home minister, defence minister, external affairs minister, finance minister, and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission will be the other five permanent members of the council.

Other Union ministers will be invited to attend meetings as required.

The prime minister's principal secretary will be the national security adviser and the channel for servicing the high-powered organisation.

The back-up structure will comprise three elements. The Joint Intelligence Committee will act as the NSC secretariat, for which role it will be suitably revamped. The committee is likely to get a new chairman shortly.

The strategic policy group will be strengthened to provide inter-ministerial co-ordination and back-up for the NSC. It will comprise the Cabinet secretary, the three service chiefs, foreign secretary, home secretary, defence secretary, secretary (defence production), finance secretary, revenue secretary, Reserve Bank of India governor, Intelligence Bureau director, secretary in the Cabinet secretariat, secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy, scientific adviser to the defence minister, space secretary, and JIC chairman.

Other invitees will be brought in as required.

The third element will be the NSC advisory board comprising eminent persons outside government. They will be chosen from among experts in external security, strategic analysis, foreign affairs, defence and the armed forces, internal security, science and technology, and economics.

The board will meet once in a month, or more frequently if required. Its principal function will be to provide long-term prognosis and analysis to the NSC and recommend solutions and policy options to the issues raised by it.

The advisory board will also be asked from time to time to study specific issues.

The first task of the NSC will be to undertake the strategic defence review, which was promised in the national agenda for governance and has assumed greater importance after the nuclear tests in May. As part of this exercise, the NSC will also have to design a command and control system for India's nuclear capability.

Senior defence ministry officials indicated that the principal challenges facing the NSC are non-proliferation and missile deployment. India has already refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, saying it cannot be done unconditionally. It has also refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. With the P-5 adamant that India must sign the CTBT unconditionally, the NSC faces an acid test.

The NSC's three-tier structure is based on the recommendations of a task force headed by former defence minister Krishen Chandra Pant who submitted the report to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee almost five months ago.

The other members of the task force were Jaswant Singh, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, and Air Commodore (retd) Jasjit Singh, director of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

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