Succumbing to the pressure from the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday said his government was actively considering legislation to further strengthen the substantive anti-terrorism law in line with the global consensus in the fight against Islamic terrorism.
The BJP has been demanding for quite some time that tougher anti-terrorism laws like the Prevention of Terrorists Act (POTA) -- which was incidentally revoked by the present government when it came to power -- be brought to fight Islamic terrorism.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, which has been dithering on this issue despite a string of blasts that has rocked the country including the national capital New Delhi twice, has belatedly woken up to the reality that tougher anti-terrorism laws are needed to contain the menace.
The government had all along been saying that existing laws are sufficient in dealing with terrorism.
Addressing the Governors' Conference here on its concluding day, Manmohan Singh also conceded that there were "vast gaps in intelligence."
Although a significant number of parties in the ruling coalition including the Congress, who place Muslim appeasement over national security, are against a tough law, the Congress seems to have finally veered around the view that an extra-ordinary law was required to meet an extra-ordinary situation.
The prime minister said, "politics should not be the driver for the debate on terrorism."
The Congress had played a central role in labeling the scrapped anti-terror law POTA, introduced by the previous BJP-led government, as something designed to hurt the interests of the minorities (Muslims).
The prime minister also referred to the demand for creation of a federal agency to probe all terrorist incidents and said it could be a Central agency, which could assist the States in investigation whenever a major terrorist incident took place.
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June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.