Centre ask States to share intelligence on a common grid

Tags: National News

In a recent high-level meet with the Directors­ General of Police(DGP) of all states, chaired by Union Minister of Home Affairs Mr. Amit Shah, the central government has asked the States to share more intelligence inputs through the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC).

• The Multi Agency Centre (MAC), is a common counter­-terrorism grid under the Intelligence Bureau that was made operational in 2001 following the Kargil War as per suggestions of Kargil Review Committee Report and Group of Ministers (GoM) Report.
• The Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) functions under Intelligence Bureau(IB) and is headquartered in New Delhi.
• The state offices have been designated as subsidiary MACs (SMACs).
• As many as 28 organizations, including the  Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), armed forces, and State police, are part of the platform. 
• Various security agencies share real­time intelligence inputs on the MAC
• At the MAC level, the meeting of all these agencies is convened almost every day where the intelligence of the last 24 hours is brought on to the table, discussed and follow­up action is devised or agreed upon
• As per the parliamentary standing committee report in 2020, one of the major hurdles in the functioning of MAC is that states are often reluctant to share information on the platform, thus creating several gaps in sharing critical information at the right time.
• The Union Home Ministry, along with the IB, was contemplating to extend the connectivity of SMAC to the districts in a phased manner.