NCTC ball in Centre's court now: Jayalalithaa

CHENNAI: Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Friday indicated that the ball was in  the Central government’s court as far as the demand for setting up of a sub-committee of chief ministers to examine the provisions of the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) is concerned.She was addressing the media with Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik after a 45-minute discussion with him after he called on her at her residence.When asked for her views on Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s suggestion that she head the sub-committee to study the NCTC proposal, Jayalalithaa said, “What I think is not important. This was a suggestion made to the Centre, particularly to the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is up to them to accept or reject the suggestion.”Asked whether they discussed the Presidential elections, Jayalalithaa said, “If we had discussed anything like that we would have told you about it.”Earlier in the day, Patnaik and Jayalalithaa shared the dais at the 76th Utkal Divas Samaroha, organised by the Utkal Association in Chennai. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister urged the people not to be guided by forces of disintegration, but by those who are making concerted efforts for the consolidation and unity of the states.She said regional inter-state co-operation has been the ‘touchstone’ of development indices and Indian states are not isolated from each other’s growth impulses. The future belongs to cooperation and not isolationism, she said.“As the world keeps getting metaphorically smaller, it is impossible to imagine that states can survive or sustain themselves on a stand-alone basis,” she said.“There is a definite and very high level of interdependence emerging in a situation wherein we need to act together, and prosper together, by a certain well understood system of bilateral relations, under which the outcomes would lead to a larger collective benefit,” Jayalalithaa added.“Law and order, especially, becomes important in the wake of terrorist activities, drug trafficking and general maintenance of public order,” she added.