Chidambaram holds meeting to speed up NSG hubs

Home Minister P.Chidambaram on Tuesday met the chiefs of the Army and the NSG to speed up the process of setting up National Security Guard (NSG) hubs in the country and make the ones in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad operational in the first phase.

In the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks, the government has decided to immediately set up NSG hubs in the four metros followed by more such hubs in virtually every state capital.

During the hour-long meeting, Chidambaram also discussed the provision of trained anti-terrorist forces for cities like Bangalore not covered in the first list.

The home minister had earlier said that certain cities that will not have NSG hubs will be covered by a trained anti-terrorist force provided by defence forces -- for example, Bangalore will be covered by the Special Forces of the Army's Parachute Regiment.

The Regiment's headquarters is in Bangalore and it has seven Special Forces battalions under its command. These SF troops are deployed to carry out action against terrorists in the North-east and Jammu and Kashmir.

In the course of time, more NSG hubs will be set up in different parts of the country and ultimately there will be a hub in virtually every state capital, the Home Minister has said.

Till then states have been asked to raise and deploy their own anti-terrorist forces and the Centre has promised to offer them all the help.

Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor and NSG Chief J K Dutt were accompanied by their senior officials.

Sources said Gen Kapoor spoke of shortage of hands to help in setting up such hubs.