PolicyHome affairs
India's internal security picture has 'changed irrevocably', Home Secretary tells new IPS officers
Govind Mohan told the 78th IPS batch in Hyderabad that drugs, cybercrime and illegal immigration are now the big tests, and that the North East's trouble is ethnic conflict, not insurgency.
Key points
- 151 officer trainees, including 37 women and 16 from neighbouring countries, passed out at the national police academy.
- Govind Mohan said militant Naxalism has largely ended and the North East now faces largely ethnic conflict.
- He named narcotics, cybercrime and illegal immigration as the new front lines.
The forces that once shaped India’s internal security have largely faded and been replaced by drugs, cybercrime and illegal immigration, Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan told newly trained police officers in Hyderabad on Saturday.
“The conventional internal security landscape has changed irrevocably,” Mohan said at the Dikshant Parade of the 78th Regular Recruit batch of the Indian Police Service at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy. The parade marked the end of the first phase of training for 151 officer trainees, among them 37 women and 16 officers from neighbouring countries.
Mohan said militant Naxalism had largely ended and insurgency in the North East had shrunk to minuscule levels. “What is happening in certain parts of the North East is not insurgency. It is largely ethnic conflict,” he said. “Homegrown terrorism has also come to, more or less, an end,” he added, though he cited the Red Fort blast in Delhi as a sign that the threat had not gone away.
The new front lines
He said cybercrime had become an “easy business” built on mule bank accounts and fake SIM cards, and that the main battles against it would be fought by states and Union Territories. He warned the officers about “fake messages, deep fake videos, all kinds of altered reality” on social media that could set off unrest, and called for illegal foreigners to be identified and dealt with under the law.
Mohan read out a message from Home Minister Amit Shah calling for zero tolerance towards terrorism, better intelligence sharing, a role for young officers in the Smart Border Initiative, and a push towards a “Nasha-Mukt Bharat”. Mohan noted that Shah has promised a drug-free country within three years.
He told the batch to avoid publicity and let their results speak for them.