MUMBAI: In view of the severe criticism of intelligence failure after the Mumbai terror attacks, the first batch of special dedicated intelligence cadre for Maharashtra police is being raised and the training had commenced last week, according to police sources.
The training of nearly 50 recruits began in Mumbai, where they would undergo six-months of training. The sources said that the first batch of recruits was addressed by the state Director General of Police Anami Narayan Roy and the state intelligence department (SID) chief D. Shivanandan.
Upon completion of the training to be imparted by senior intelligence officers from the army, National Security Guards (NSG) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the police intelligence units in the state, the recruits would join the police in the SID.
They will not be posted in any executive department of the police as they would be absorbed in the dedicated intelligence cadre. The course model is exhaustive and includes tradecraft, field training, understanding subjects like terrorism, etc.
Though the first batch is being trained in Mumbai, the future batches would be trained in Hadapsar, in Pune.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) General Secretary Gopinath Munde on Thursday refuted recent reports about the extremist Shiv Sena party wanting a 50-50 formula for seat sharing for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls and said that the two parties had not yet met for seat sharing talks.
“We learned of the entire issue of seat sharing only through the media. The BJP and Sena have not had even a single meeting on seat sharing so far. However, we have been allies for a long time now, and I am confident that we would reach a mutually agreeable consensus,” he said.
Denying any reports of the either of the two allies and particularly the SS joining hands with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for the polls as a result of “media fabrication,” Munde said, “There is no question of either of our parties joining hands with a third now or in the future. We would go the whole way only with each other. It remains to be seen which constituencies would pose a problem when it comes to deciding the seats. However, we have always had healthy discussions with the SS on every point, so there is no need for any premature speculation over which seats would cause trouble between the two parties.”
