NEW DELHI, JAN 18: Union Home Secretary B P Singh said today that ``unheard of steps for a non-political event'' were being taken to ensure that Pakistan's tour of India is trouble-free. Speaking to The Indian Express, Singh said that the state police will take over all stadia 48 hours before the matches and have been asked to make ``sufficient preventive arrests'' to pre-empt any violence.Such unprecedented steps, he said, have been ``necessitated'' after the Shiv Sena's acts of vandalism in New Delhi and now Mumbai. The security arrangement spanning several states-where the two teams play-will be monitored directly from the Union Home Ministry's office in North Block here.Singh claimed nothing would be left to chance. At New Delhi as well as all other venues, the police alone would be in control of the stadia-and not the officials concerned-and would keep a tab on all entries and exits. Additionally, a police control room would be set up at each stadium, he said, which would liaise withstate authorities under North Block's supervision. So, in effect, all control rooms would be linked to each other, he stressed.As for making preventive arrests, the Home Ministry has asked the law enforcement agencies of all states to detain as many Shiv Sena killjoys as possible to ensure that the matches proceeded smoothly. ``We cannot afford not to take this elementary measures. And the bottomline is that it is the task of the police to nab the miscreants,'' Singh said.In this regard, Delhi Police has a tougher task at hand-considering how miserably it failed to stop the Shiv Sainiks from digging up Kotla pitch early this month. Police Commissioner VN Singh has been summoned at North Block and briefed thoroughly about the significance of the job and told that there was no scope for a repeat performance (either by the Shiv Sainiks or the errant policemen who became mere bystanders the first time over). In the given scenario, Delhi Police is likely to make the maximum preventive arrests. The crackdownon Sainiks, disclose sources, would begin at least three days before the match at Kotla.A senior Intelligence Bureau (IB) official has been made the head of the Central Security Liaison Committee, set up by the Home Ministry recently, and he would be in ``regular touch'' with the state polices' immediately after the Pakistani team lands here.In reality, however, the Home Ministry is now tied up with more security-related teams for the matches than it had bargained for in the first place. A committee set up by the Ministry to look after the security of Pakistani team players is functioning with Special Secretary (internal security) Nikhil Kumar as its incharge.
