Private entities ramp up security but govt yet to devise foolproof plan to protect city
A month after the Mumbai carnage, you can still enter the city’s municipal corporation building without having your bag checked and walk right into the mayor’s office.
You can even enter Mantralaya without being asked about the large plastic bag in your purse, or walk into JJ Hospital and no one will stop you for your identification.
The scars of November 26- 28 are visible. The hurt remains but Mumbai has typically bounced back. Yet the lessons from the three horrific days in November may not have been fully learnt. The gaps in the city’s security cover have not been plugged.
Look around you, and you will find there are more policemen around now. On the ground, though, real change has not come about – where intelligence gathering and sharing are concerned, where coordination among security agencies is concerned.
Taking no chances, private entities have stepped in to secure areas under their control. Even as most government buildings and other installations still have poor security, many hotels in Mumbai have initiated steps to
prevent a repeat of the November 26 events.
The Taj Mahal hotel, for instance, is using private security companies to build an elaborate security wall around its premises. Armed guards are strategically positioned on the fourth floor balcony on all sides. At least five private security personnel guard the two main roads leading up to the hotel.
The hotel’s main entrance has two armed Black Cat commandos. At the Gateway of India entrance is a police van with eight police officers.
Inside the hotel, 70 CCTV security cameras monitor the public spaces. More will be installed soon. The live feed directly goes to the Anti- Terrorism Squad ( ATS) control room.
The Trident has a similar set- up. Hotel staff and private security guards man the barricaded entrance where no cars are allowed unless you have reservation. There are beat policemen stationed at all times, but they have no weapons.
At the Taj Land’s End in Bandra, which is close to actor Shah Rukh Khan’s bungalow Mannat, the security is extremely tight. All public and private transport vehicles are told stop at a distance from the hotel. Private security guards are stationed along the way.
The hotel itself has multiple layers of security operated by both hotel staff and private security agencies. This contrasts with what the state government has done for the common man. At the first meeting of his cabinet, chief minister Ashok Chavan approved a 127- crore plan for security that was hailed as a step in the right direction. Insiders, however, punctured this claim as an eyewash because this was a routine outlay for this year in a five- year plan already in place.
According to the plan to beef up the police force, 11,000 policemen should be added to the state police every year. This implies that around 110 crore out of Rs 127 crore will towards the salaries of the new recruits this year. How then will the government fund the setting up of a crack security system to make India’s financial capital secure? Another lesson that has not been learnt from the November attacks: intelligence intercepts continue to be ignored at the respective action stations.
The reason, argues a state government official, is that “ nine out of ten inputs are routine or redundant”. But just such an approach caused the specific intelligence inputs on Leopold Cafe, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Oberoi to be ignored, allowing the terrorists to attack the city.
If there are gaps in inland security, there is a lot to be firmed up in coastal security. Had anyone asked, they would have learnt one shocking detail: Mumbai’s coastline is manned by only five patrol boats.
Chief minister Chavan has announced his government will acquire 40 speedboats for patrolling.
Like the Rs 127 crore plan to beef up the security apparatus, this too is a dusted- up scheme which was part a larger central coastal security plan that had been neglected for two years.
From the look of it, the government would rather go ahead with plans that have been in cold storage for years — such as a fresh move to issue smart cards to 50,000 fishermen.
This long- pending scheme, again, doesn’t address the lacunae, like giving permission to fishermen to take outsiders on their trawlers without identification.
Sources said at present a pass is issued in a fisherman’s name and then the number of people being ferried by him is added on the pass. No names were given or identification sought. “ As it is, in the absence of proper regulation, all kinds of people drift into the city’s waters for fishing, some even from Bangladesh,” a coastal defence officer said.
The string of private ports and jetties coming up along the 720- km coastline of the state have no security.
One view is they are a security concern. But, the earlier Vilasrao Deshmukh government wooed them against the advice of security agencies. In fact, Deshmukh is believed to have once brushed aside the warnings of a naval officer that the small stretches of Maharashtra’s coastline should not be marketed to private parties.
Now, about 1,740 m of the waterfront at Dharamtar is to be given to Ispat Industries for “ development of a self- controlled jetty”. Initial approval has been given to another company for setting up a captive jetty at Dehra creek in Sindhudurg district, sources said.
Unlike Nhava Sheva port, Mumbai Port — which controls a vast network of roads in south Mumbai, apart from sensitive rigs and installations — refuses to hand over its security to the Central Industrial Security Force ( CISF) after years of debate. Intelligence agencies have found its internal security system to be inadequate.
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