M.K. Narayanan

M. K. Narayanan

Mayankote Kelath Narayanan (born 1934) is the Governor of the state of West Bengal and was the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of India from January 2005 to January 2010. He offered to resign on 30 November 2008 over the attacks in Mumbai that killed nearly 200 people, but his resignation was not accepted by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The Indian media establishment has heavily criticized him for paying more attention to the LTTE and Sri Lanka then to Pakistan and terrorism issues.

M.K.Narayanan headed the Intelligence Bureau from 1987 to 1990, and then again for a short period from 1991 to 1992. Narayanan grew infamous when he attempted to replace the 2003 head of the Research and Analysis Wing, C.D.Sahay. He appointed his protege Hormis Tharakan to the post. Tharakan and Narayanan share a home state, and it is believed that Narayanan wanted to maintain control over both the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing by appointing his proteges in these posts. Tharakan is to be succeeded by Avadesh Behari, another Narayanan loyalist. Narayanan's role in dealing with the tribal insurgency in Tripura was highly commended.

He was known to be an expert on Sri Lanka relations, and often met the former LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran. Some of the criticisms of Narayanan are that he has a perceived inability to build up an effective command and control in the Government of India for counter-terrorism. The second was his failure to improve morale and man management in the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) and to strengthen cohesion in the Indian intelligence community. Both these shortfalls are evident in the country's intelligence system failure prior to the 26/11 attacks. Another large failure in the Indian intelligence system was the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. At the time, Narayanan was the IB head.