Hyderabad blasts: Does Centre's responsibility end with alerting states, asks Sushma Swaraj

In the upper house, her counterpart Arun Jaitley said there was a need to "de-politicise" intelligence agencies so that they can focus on national security. "Yesterday's incident is a reminder to us that the war against terror must go on uninterrupted and we expect the home minister to assure us on this," Jaitley said, adding that India should not let its guard down as both state and non-state players across the border were working against the country. Jaitley also asked if the government had taken steps to prevent possible terror attacks after the executions of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru.

The upper house also witnessed a spat between Shinde and Naidu, with the BJP leader telling the minister that had he been serious, he would have rushed to Hyderabad soon after the blasts and come to Parliament in the morning.

When the Home minister retorted that he had gone to Hyderabad at 4 am after monitoring developments through the night, Naidu said, "You have not done any favour to us. You have done your duty. The incident happened at 7 pm yesterday. You should have gone there at 8 pm and come back by the morning. That shows your seriousness".

Taking exception to Shinde's statement that there was no specific information, Naidu said, "What specific information do you want? Do you think people will give you house number and street number? The government is clueless."

SP leader Ramgopal Yadav also took on Shinde, calling his statement very ordinary and totally disappointing. The DMK's T Siva described the home minister's statement as "unsatisfactory", saying it simply listed incidents. Derek O'Brien (Trinamool Congress) dubbed Shinde's statement as "copy-paste", saying it resembled the one made after the 2007 blasts.

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