Former RAW chief to head revamped national security advisory board

NEW DELHI: Days after the Pahalgam terror attack, in which a Pakistan link has emerged during investigations, the Centre has reconstituted the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), appointing former RAW chief Alok Joshi as its chairman and 14 other domain experts that include ex-commanders from the three armed forces, former diplomats, officers and technocrats.
NSAB, tasked with undertaking long-term analysis of and providing perspective to the Prime Minister-led National Security Council on issues related to national security, now has 15 serving members. The other new members appointed are former Western Air Commander Air Marshal P M Sinha, former Southern Army Commander Lt Gen A K Singh and Rear Admiral (Retd) Monty Khanna, former IPS officers Rajiv Ranjan Verma and Manmohan Singh, and former diplomat B Venkatesh Varma. NSAB also comprises technical experts like Prof K Kamakoti and B S Murthy.
The board is reconstituted from time to time, with appointments usually for a two-year term. The members' tenures do not run concurrently.
The decision to get Joshi, a top intelligence brain - who served in the Intelligence Bureau before he joined RAW and retired as its director, and then went on to head the country's technical intelligence agency, National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), post-retirement - to lead the NSAB comes at a time when India is bracing to give a befitting response to Pakistan for continuing to sponsor terrorism in J&K by facilitating recurrent attacks on innocent civilians, the Pahalgam carnage by Pakistani terrorists, facilitated by local Kashmir aides, being the most recent.
With the carnage being seen as an intelligence failure, bringing in Joshi, in place of ex-ambassador to Russia P S Raghavan who has been at the helm for almost 8-9 years now, is seen as a clear move to focus the national security policy on revamping intelligence gathering and analysis to foil any future terror misadventures by Pakistani elements.