Prelims: Current events of national and international importance | Internal Security
Why in News?
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) formally unveiled PRAHAAR, India's first unified, comprehensive National Counter-Terrorism Policy and Strategy.
The 7 Strategic Pillars of PRAHAAR
- The policy framework operates on an acronym-driven 7-pillar model designed to systematically neutralize terror networks.
- P — Prevention of terror attacks across land, air, and maritime domains.
- R — Responses that are swift, coordinated, and proportionate.
- A — Aggregating internal capacities for synergy (Whole-of-Government).
- H — Human rights and Rule-of-Law-based threat mitigation.
- A — Attenuating conditions enabling terrorism (De-radicalization & Rehabilitation).
- A — Aligning and shaping global counter-terrorism initiatives.
- R — Recovery and resilience via community participation (Whole-of-Society).
Key Operational Focus Areas
Multi-Agency Intelligence Fusion
- Institutionalizes real-time intelligence dissemination through the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) and Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI) under the Intelligence Bureau (IB).
- Establishes a seamless chain of command between state police forces/Anti-Terrorism Squads (ATS) and specialized central units like the National Security Guard (NSG) and National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Combating Terror Financing
- Enforces big data analytics, AI, and big data fusion tools to track illicit crypto-wallet transactions, dark-web crowdsourcing, and decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
- Strengthens compliance with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards to cut off cross-border state-sponsored terror funding.
- Addresses technological vectors like drone-based arms drops, cyber-radicalization, and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) threats.
Legal Foundation
- Operates within the legal architecture of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, PMLA, 2002, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) codes.
- Integrates legal experts directly into terror investigation teams to improve evidence-gathering, ensuring high conviction rates while upholding human rights and due process under judicial oversight.
Community-Centric De-Radicalization
- Adopts a graded approach to radicalized youth, prioritizing community-led de-radicalization, skill development, and psychological counseling for minor offenders while enforcing legal prosecution against core ideologues.
- Focuses on preventing prison radicalization by segregating extremist recruiters from vulnerable inmates.
Reference
DD News | India’s first national counter-terror policy
