Rocked by a series of terror attacks in the last decade, Mumbai has now become part of a network of international cities that will exchange techniques and develop infrastructure to combat extremism and strengthen their cyber security system.
The network, formed at the UN level, has promised Maharashtra government to help in developing infrastructure to tackle extremism and fortify cyber security mechanism, Minister of State for Home Ranjeet Patil said today.
Mumbai is the only city from Asia to be part of the network of 25 international cities, which are badly affected by terrorist activities in recent times. The group will serve as a common platform among these cities to exchange techniques and develop infrastructure to combat terrorism.
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The first meeting of representatives of these 25 cities was held in New York last week. At the conclave, they decided to set up a corpus and help each other to deal with terrorist activities.
New York, London, Paris, Denver, Oslo, Stockholm, Montreal and Copenhagen are the other prominent cities included in the network. The only criterion for the selection was that the city should be the financial hub of its respective country and affected by terrorism.
"The group has promised us to help in developing infrastructure to combat extremism and threats from cyber world," Patil, who represented Mumbai at the meeting, told reporters here.
"We discussed various challenges before the global community as far as extremism is concerned. Everybody agreed that students were at a high risk of indoctrination," he said.
The Minister informed the other members about the state government's preparedness to counter terrorism. These included setting up a specialised force and committees at ward level to prevent youth from taking to extremism.
"We have requested them to help us in building a strong infrastructure in the field of cyber security. It was pointed out at the meeting that extremism was spreading across the world and no country was an exception to that," he said.
Patil said the New York city administration will assist Mumbai in providing state-of-the-art training in the field of cyber security.
He said the government will soon introduce measures to encourage de-radicalisation.
"We have prepared draft of a policy that will ensure no community feels left behind. We are going to allot more schools, scholarships and health care facilities for those who are not getting enough attention at present. We will also allocate more funds for them," he added.
