India is resurrecting plans to create a federal counter-terrorism agency after multiple bombings in the cities of Ahmedabad and Bangalore that killed a combined total of 51 people, according to the Home Ministry.

Shivraj Patil, the Home Minister, plans to meet Chief Ministers and police chiefs from India's states in the next few days to discuss the proposal, which has been bogged down by turf wars since 2004.

O.Kedia, a spokesman for the Home Ministry, told The Times: "It will be happening very soon. The government feels the need for a central agency that will have expertise in handling such cases."

India has suffered a series of bomb and other terrorist attacks in the past 20 years, most of which it has blamed on militant Islamic groups based in Pakistan or Bangladesh and backed by Pakistani intelligence.

Last year, out of 22,000 people killed in terrorist attacks worldwide, 2,300 people, or 10.5 per cent, were in India, according to the US State Department's latest report on global terrorism.

Yet India rarely arrests, let alone convicts, the culprits, because of its poorly-trained and under-staffed law enforcement agencies and its chronically overloaded judicial system, experts say.

C.Uday Bhaskar, a security analyst and a former director of New Delhi's Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, said: "The crucial point is that India doesn't have a dedicated counter-terrorism agency. It's ironic when we've been talking about terrorism for more than 20 years, since way before the 9/11 attacks."

The main problem is that under India's constitution, which came into effect in 1950, law enforcement is the responsibility of state governments.

Many states are strongly opposed to amending that article, especially those states run by opposition parties, which fear that a central body could be used as a political tool.

Counter-terrorism thus falls between several different national and state agencies with competing political masters and without even a central database to share information.

The Research and Analysis Wing, roughly India's equivalent of MI6, is responsible for external threats, while the Intelligence Bureau, India's MI5, handles domestic security.

The Central Bureau of Investigation, the closest thing to the United States' FBI, probes serious crimes, but only with the permission of state governments.

The Home Ministry oversees a police force of 2.2 million officers, but they are commanded by state governments and often lack the training and equipment to handle even minor crimes.

The judiciary, meanwhile, has a backlog of 29.2 million cases, because of a shortage of judges and a surfeit of corrupt lawyers. Few judges are trained to handle complicated terrorism cases, which still fall under a law drawn up in 1967 and can take several years to complete.

The US State Department's terrorism report, published in April, said: "The Indian government's counter-terrorism efforts remained hampered by outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems.

"The Indian court system was slow, laborious, and prone to corruption; terrorism trials can take years to complete. Many of India's local police forces were poorly staffed, lacked training, and were ill-equipped to combat terrorism effectively."

The last government, under the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), tried to close some of these loopholes in 2002 by introducing a Prevention Of Terrorist Activities Act, similar to the Patriot Act in the United States.

The current coalition government, led by the Congress Party, repealed the law in 2004 on the grounds that it breached human rights.

The Home Ministry then proposed creating a federal agency responsible for serious inter-state crimes, including terrorism and drugs trafficking. That has been repeatedly blocked by state governments, several of which are controlled by the BJP.

The Home Minister now hopes to forge a consensus between state governments in the aftermath of the recent bombings to avoid the lengthy process of changing the constitution.

Some experts say the need for the new agency is all the more acute since a group calling itself the "Indian Mujahideen" claimed responsibility for the Ahmedabad bombs.

While the group could be a front for Pakistan-based militants, it has raised fears that a new indigenous movement has emerged from India's population of 151 million Muslims.

Mr Bhaskar, the security analyst, said: "Even if you only recruit 0.01 percent of India's Muslims, you have a core of 15,000 Jihadis. If I was in the shoes of al Qaeda's planners, I'd be focusing attention on India and Bangladesh."

He said the new agency needed a budget of at least $1 billion to start with. However, other experts fear the new body will only add another layer of bureaucracy, and they say the government should spend the money on strengthening existing agencies, especially the Intelligence Bureau.

Kanchan Lakshman, research fellow at the Institute for Conflict Management, said: "There are enough agencies working at the state level already. The main concern is that you will simply create duplicity of work."

The BJP, meanwhile, continues to argue that a new federal agency would be powerless without the revival of the 2002 terrorism law. Rajnath Singh, the BJP's president, told reporters today: "The country needs a tough law to tackle the menace. Without making a tough law, the creation of any such agency will be of no use. It is something like an army without weapons."

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Zardari still has to tackle tough questions
• Material evidence 'debunks' Turin Shroud
• BBC criticised over Uganda gay execution poll