New Delhi, Aug 4 (IANS) Terming home-grown terror modules as the "new reality" faced by India, Home Minister P. Chidambaram Thursday said the problem was not paid adequate attention when the nation was fighting cross-border terrorism.


Replying to a short duration discussion in the Rajya Sabha on the situation “arising out of growing incidents of terrorism in the country with special reference to recent blasts in Mumbai on July 13,” Chidambaram said the country was building capacities to improve intelligence gathering and fight terrorism.

He said security forces had neutralised 51 terror modules and added that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has a very good record of filing chargesheets and was currently probing 29 cases.

Earlier, intervening in the debate, Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley said there can be no place for compassion in dealing with terror and national security should prevail over vote bank politics.

Chidamabaram said as long as the epicentre of terrorism was in Afghanistan and Pakistan region, "we will continue to be under the terror shadow".

"We live in the most troubled, vulnerable neighbourhood in the world," he said.

He said initially terrorism was imported from across the border.

"The new reality is that this is not the only source of terror anymore. The second fact we must realise is that many terror groups are home-grown terror. They may be inspired by groups outside but they are in India and they are Indian modules."

He said when Indian modules of these groups were being formed, the nation "failed to recognise them".

"How SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) has morphed into Indian Mujahideen," he said.

He said that while the investigating agencies were probing jihadi cases, right-wing fascists were also on the rise in India.

"All over the world, right wing fascist groups are on the rise," he said.

The minister said there was a belief earlier that home grown modules belonged to one religion but that unquestioning faith led intelligence agencies to a wrong path in some terror cases with young boys spending years behind bars.

Terming the blast in Pune in 2010 and the Mumbai blasts last month as "blots," he said that Pune incident occurred due to police and citizens not acting on shared intelligence while there was no intelligence in case of blasts in Mumbai.

Chidambram said the response of the government in gathering evidence and providing relief to people was swifter after Mumbai blasts than 26/11 terror attack.

Terming policemen as “building blocks” of security and intelligence system, he said that against 6 lakh police vacancies in the states, over 90,000 recruitments had been made.

Central armed police had also recruited over 93,000 personnel, he said, adding thousands of crores had been spent in procurement of gadgets and equipment.

"I have taken risks to procure. Do not know which CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) will find fault (with)," Chidambaram said, adding that capacity building was a task in progress.

He said it was wrong to say that US had not faced a terror attack after 9/11 incident.

Chidamabarm rejected apprehensions about a national intelligence grid and said several countries have such a facility.

The minister said the government was putting in place a security architecture which a country of India’s size and complexity needs.

In his intervention, Jaitley said political divisions will not help in fighting terror, and terrorism should not be seen in context of any religion.

"Take a hard-line on national security," Jaitley said.

He said resilience of Mumbai should not be misconstrued and the city and other parts of the country should be protected from any further terror attacks.

The debate, which was initiated by Manohar Joshi of Shiv Sena, had begun Wednesday.