INDIAN PRIME minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday he would boost and overhaul the nation's counterterrorism capabilities following the attacks on its western port city of Mumbai in which 174 people died and 300 were injured.
Air and sea security would be increased, and the main counter-terrorist national security guard would be increased in size and given more regional bases, he said.
The prime minister called a meeting of leaders from the country's main political parties to discuss the situation.
"In the face of this national threat and in the aftermath of this national tragedy, all of us from different political parties must rise above narrow political considerations and stand united," he said.
The Indian army was also placed on alert along the frontier with neighbouring nuclear rival Pakistan which it blames for sponsoring the terrorist strike.
Defence officials in New Delhi said "warning orders" had been issued to the army following intelligence reports of Pakistani troop redeployment from its restive western Afghan border to its eastern border with India.
However, India's three service chiefs cautioned the government against escalating the alert or deploying for war as it did after the 2001 attack by Islamist gunmen on the parliament in New Delhi, which was also blamed on Pakistan, saying such a move was too hasty and could be counterproductive. That deployment had threatened to escalate into a nuclear exchange which led to large-scale evacuation of foreign nationals.
"Preventive deployment of the army means upping the alert from green to orange in order to prevent any adventurism by the Pakistanis," said a senior military officer. It is merely a defensive measure and should not be considered unduly alarming, he added.
A news agency report from Islamabad quoted an unnamed official saying the next one or two days would be crucial to relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai assaults and denied involvement by state agencies which India holds responsible for most terror strikes.
India has also considered suspending the three-year peace process with Islamabad following the attacks that officials in Delhi claim were executed by gunmen from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT or Army of the Pure) group based at Mudrike near the southern Pakistani city of Lahore.
India's cabinet committee on security headed by the prime minister is meeting in Delhi today to determine a course of action and formulate a plan to deal with recurring terrorism.
As Mumbai cremated its dead yesterday, federal interior minister Shivraj Patil resigned, taking responsibility for his ministry's security lapses. Mr Patil's resignation is seen as a damage control exercise by the Congress-led federal government in the wake of widespread criticism of his handling of the ministry and failure to investigate frequent terrorist strikes across India.
According to interior ministry statistics, India has witnessed 64 bomb blasts in less than six months this year which killed 215 people and injured 900.
Finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram succeeds Mr Patil. Other senior politicians and senior civil servants are also expected to resign soon. An offer by national security minister MK Narayanan to resign was turned down by the prime minister.
The three-day killing spree turned India's financial and entertainment hub into a televised war zone. At the weekend the 105-year-old Taj Mahal hotel, once patronised by the world's rich, famous and flamboyant, was a shambles. Broken glass, half-burnt Burma teak tables, smashed glassware and broken liquor bottles littered the city's most elegant, old world Harbour Bar.
The walls of the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant too were peppered with bullet marks and shrapnel from grenades from the extended firefight between army commandos and militants as they chased each other, laid ambushes and dodged one another in a macabre death dance.
Half-finished bowls of soup and plates were still piled with food on chilli-sauce-stained white table cloths. In the lobby traumatised hotel staff huddled together discussing the events of the days before. All wore face masks and gloves in case they were summoned to carry another body from the debris upstairs, as a line of white hearses waited outside.