With the National Counter Teerrorism Centre issue turning into a political crisis for his government, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh intervened on Tuesday to assure the state governments that their powers would not be usurped.
In a letter to seven chief ministers who had written to him on the issue, Dr Singh wrote Tuesday: “It is not the government’s intent in any way to affect the basic features of constitutional provisions and allocation of powers between the states and the Union.”

Dr Singh further directed Union home minister P. Chidambaram to hold consultations with the states. “I have noted your concerns ... and am asking the home minister to address them suitably, in consultation with you and other chief ministers,” he said. The PM wrote to the chief ministers Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Narendra Modi (Gujarat), Naveen Patnaik (Orissa), Nitish Kumar (Bihar), J. Jayalalithaa (Tamil Nadu), Manik Sarkar (Tripura) and Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh).