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The Ministry of Home Affairs unveiled PRAHAAR as India's first comprehensive National Counter Terrorism Policy and Strategy on 23 February 2026.
It is built on seven pillars covering prevention, response, internal capacity, rule of law, conditions conducive to terrorism, international alignment, and recovery and resilience.
The framework formalises real-time intelligence sharing through the Multi Agency Centre and a coordinated chain of command with forces such as the National Security Guard.
It targets terror financing by tracing crypto wallets, choking dark web crowdsourcing and seizing assets, in line with Financial Action Task Force standards.
An Annual Anti-Terror Conference organised by the NIA under the Ministry of Home Affairs is one of the layered oversight mechanisms.
The common intelligence-sharing grid through which PRAHAAR formalises real-time intelligence flow between agencies; functions round the clock as the nodal body for sharing inputs with central and State agencies
India's federal counter-terrorism investigation agency; organises the Annual Anti-Terror Conference under the aegis of the Ministry of Home Affairs, which reviews counter-terrorism measures, identifies gaps and recommends policy, legal and institutional reform
The specialised central force named in PRAHAAR as part of the swift, coordinated response chain alongside State police agencies
The global standard-setter for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism, whose standards PRAHAAR's terror-financing measures are aligned with
Owner of the PRAHAAR policy and of the phased implementation and layered oversight framework
India's principal anti-terror statute; the 2019 amendment, which came into effect on 14 August 2019, empowered the Union Government to designate individuals — not only organisations — as terrorists
Created the NIA as a federal agency to investigate scheduled offences including terrorism; the NIA now also convenes the Annual Anti-Terror Conference that reviews PRAHAAR's implementation
Placed the NSG, raised in October 1984, on a statutory footing as the federal contingency force for counter-terrorism operations
The international standards on countering terror financing that PRAHAAR's asset-seizure, crypto-tracing and cross-border measures are designed to meet
Tracing crypto wallets and choking dark web crowdsourcing brings counter-terrorism into direct contact with the regulation of virtual digital assets and with FATF's travel rule for crypto transfers
Police and public order are State subjects, so a national counter-terrorism doctrine must work through coordination — a State police and central force chain of command — rather than by displacing State authority
The pillar on attenuating conditions conducive to terrorism, delivered through community-collaborative modules, is where security policy meets the social and developmental dimension of the syllabus
Writing rule of law and human rights in as a pillar responds directly to the criticism levelled at earlier special anti-terror statutes and remains the central tension in any answer on counter-terrorism law
The pillar on aligning international efforts connects to India's long-standing push for a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism at the United Nations
Securing critical infrastructure sits inside PRAHAAR and overlaps with the cyber security architecture built around CERT-In and the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre
GS Paper 3 > Internal Security > Terrorism, Money Laundering and Linkages with Organised Crime
General Awareness > Internal Security and National Institutions
General Awareness > Current Affairs and Government Policy
Internal security institutions and counter-terrorism frameworks are recurring GS-3 Mains themes and appear in Prelims through agency-identification questions
India's first comprehensive National Counter Terrorism Policy and Strategy, unveiled by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 23 February 2026, built on seven pillars
The round-the-clock intelligence-sharing platform under the Intelligence Bureau, created in December 2001, through which PRAHAAR formalises real-time intelligence flow
Aggregating capacities across ministries, agencies and levels of government so that counter-terrorism is coordinated rather than agency-by-agency
Extending counter-terrorism beyond state agencies to communities, used in PRAHAAR for counter-radicalisation and for recovery and resilience after attacks
An annual conference organised by the NIA under the Ministry of Home Affairs, bringing together law enforcement, intelligence, security forces, policymakers and legal experts to review counter-terrorism measures