NEW DELHI — In a landmark shift for India’s internal security architecture, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Monday, February 23, 2026, officially released PRAHAAR, the country’s first-ever comprehensive National Counter-Terrorism Policy and Strategy.
The eight-page document moves India away from a historically reactive stance toward a proactive, “intelligence-guided” framework designed to neutralize threats across land, air, sea, and the increasingly volatile digital frontier.
The Seven Pillars of PRAHAAR
The acronym PRAHAAR (meaning “strike” in Hindi) outlines the core strategic objectives of the new policy:
Prevention of terror attacks to protect Indian citizens and interests.
Responses that are swift, proportionate, and decisive.
Aggregating internal capacities for a “whole-of-government” synergy.
Human rights and “Rule of Law” based mitigation processes.
Attenuating conditions enabling terrorism, specifically radicalization.
Aligning and shaping international efforts to deny safe havens.
Recovery and resilience through a “whole-of-society” approach.
Multi-Domain Defense: Land, Air, Sea, and Cyber
Cyber – Key Threats Identified – Criminal hackers, state-sponsored attacks, and crypto-funding. Strategic Response -Proactive disruption of dark web networks and encryption-based terror modules.
Aerial – Key Threats Identified – Weaponized drones and robotics in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir., Strategic Response – Deployment of advanced detection and interception technologies.
Maritime – Key Threats Identified – Infiltration via “”water fronts”” and threats to major ports., Strategic Response -Enhanced coastal surveillance and multi-agency coordination (MAC).
Economy – Key Threats Identified – Targets like power grids, railways, space assets, and atomic energy.”, Strategic Response -Hardening of “”Critical Information Infrastructure”” (CII).”
Disrupting the “Terror Ecosystem”
A major focus of PRAHAAR is the dismantling of the logistics that fuel extremist violence. The MHA highlighted the growing nexus between organized crime and terror groups, where criminal networks provide the infrastructure for recruitment and arms smuggling.
“The policy aims to criminalize all terrorist acts and deny access to funds, weapons, and safe havens to the terrorists, their financiers, and supporters,” the MHA stated during the launch.
To achieve this, the policy mandates:
Legal Integration: Involving legal experts from the moment an FIR is registered to ensure a 95%+ conviction rate.
Intelligence Primacy: Strengthening the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC) and the Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI) under the Intelligence Bureau for real-time data sharing.
Community Engagement: Partnering with moderate religious leaders and NGOs to counter radicalization, particularly among the youth and within the prison system.
A Global Stance
While the document reaffirms India’s “Zero Tolerance” policy, it carefully notes that India does not link terrorism to any specific religion, ethnicity, or nationality. However, it pulls no punches regarding “sponsored terrorism” from neighboring territories, calling for international cooperation to extradite suspects and block transnational funding.
With the implementation of PRAHAAR, the government seeks to standardize anti-terror procedures across all Indian states, ensuring that whether a threat emerges in a metropolitan hub or a remote border outpost, the response is unified and immediate.
