The Centre on Wednesday used the Jaipur serial bomb blasts to revive the debate over establishment of a federal investigative agency, blaming the state governments for blocking the move.

Speaking to the media, Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal said most of the states were against the formation of such an investigative agency, which was envisaged to operate directly under the central command and equipped to deal with serious crimes like terrorist attacks or communal violence.

“Our Government has been trying very hard for the last one year to convince the state governments about the need for having such an investigative agency. But the response of most of the states has not been very encouraging,” he said. “However, we will continue our efforts to seek a consensus on this,” he added.

On the Jaipur blasts, the minister said a state which had witnessed similar attacks in Ajmer just a few months back should have been more alert. He said though there was no specific intelligence input of a possible terror strike in Jaipur, the state Government had been asked to maintain extra vigil at religious places in the wake of Ajmer attacks. However, he quickly added that he was not blaming the state government for any security lapse.

He said the blasts in Jaipur, and similar incidents in Varanasi, Faizabad, Ajmer and Hyderabad were all linked and there was a clear foreign hand in all of these. “We have to examine these in the light of political instability in some of our neighbouring countries,” he said, in an obvious reference to Pakistan.

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