The BJP seeks to bring to the attention of the people of India the intensifying terrorist threat, further compounded by direct and indirect political patronage by the Congress and its allies. This high-risk national drift has worked against consensus building against terror and also has undermined the national will to battle it.
The investigations, which have been so vigorously and successfully carried out by the Gujarat and Rajasthan Police, conclusively establish that the bomb blasts recently carried out in Ahmedabad and Jaipur were the handiwork of SIMI. There are definite indications of SIMI's hand in the bomb blasts in various other cities across the country. The investigations have brought out the real objective of SIMI, which, as the organisation has time and again affirmed, is to establish a Muslim Caliphate, in total defiance of our ideals of secularism, liberalism and democracy. The investigations have shown how elaborate plans for mounting terrorist attacks were executed with meticulous planning and use of advanced explosive devices by highly indoctrinated youth.
The BJP has repeatedly stated that the Congress is soft on terror. It repealed POTA, a law that provided some teeth to the administration in the fight against terrorism. The Government of India has withheld assent to laws against organized crime duly enacted by the legislatures of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The Congress-led UPA government, by with holding the Supreme Court’s decision on Afzal Guru's death sentence, has sent out the message that it feels no strong concern even for a concerted and well planed attack on India's Parliament.
The Congress-led government by failing to produce full evidence before the Tribunal under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act has sabotaged the ban on SIMI and it has taken intervention of the apex court to retrieve the situation. The nation is asking the question as to why on three occasions the ban on SIMI could be endorsed by the tribunal and why on this fourth occasion under the UPA rule the Tribunal has found the evidence against SIMI to be inadequate. Was it not the consequence of soft-pedalling at the highest levels of the government?
It is indeed most distressing that leaders of the Congress and like-minded parties went to the extent of visiting a village in Azamgarh to express sympathy and solidarity for a perpetrator of the Ahmedabad explosions, who had been arrested from that village. Their conduct is in line with the expressions of support for SIMI and other similar organizations which have, from time to time, emanated from their highest levels of leadership.
In view of the mounting evidence against SIMI, particularly in bombing in Sabarmati Express and the series of blasts in UP, the NDA Government immediately sprang into action and outlawed SIMI in September 2001. Instead of supporting such action against the terrorist body, which was in the national interest, the very next day the Congress party condemned the ban. Six months later, when a Special Session of both houses of Parliament was called to pass the anti-terror law, the POTA, Congress president Smt. Sonia Gandhi strongly opposed the anti-terror law.
After coming into office, the UPA government repealed the POTA , and then allowed the ban on SIMI to lapse on 27.09.2005. This was despite the fact that SIMI was involved in the attacks on the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on 10.7.2005 and later in Delhi on 29.10.2005. The respite from the ban helped SIMI, which had become weak and disoriented, to reorganize itself. When SIMI began striking violently again, the UPA Government was forced to re-impose the ban on it in February, 2006, and eat the humble pie. But by that time, irreparable damage had been done and the terror body had become active again.
SIMI struck at Varanasi Hanuman Mandir on 7.3.2006 killing 21 persons and massively struck at Mumbai suburban trains on 11.7.2006 causing nearly 200 deaths with several hundreds injured. The very next month in August, SIMI struck again at Malegaon, this time in a mosque, and killed 37 persons. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court upheld the ban on SIMI on July 5, 2006 rejecting its defence that it was not engaged in any terrorist activities.
The political support to the terrorist SIMI conferred on it, particularly among a section of the Muslims, dignity and legitimacy. This is precisely what the terrorists seek so as to undermine the state and the law. The support of the Congress party, as indeed of all parties in the political spectrum, should have been to the voices against terrorism and religious extremism and not for outfits like SIMI that seek to subvert the very fabric of our nation. Most let down by the politically motivated approach of the Congress is the vast majority of Muslims who feel committed to nationalism.
It is highly irresponsible for some members of the Cabinet to have publicly supported and defended SIMI. It is also reprehensible that a senior minister in the UPA government has demanded conferment of Indian citizenship on Bangladeshi infiltrators, contemptuously disregarding the Supreme Court’s scathing characterisation of such infiltration as a form of “external aggression” against the nation.
For the battle against terror to succeed, it is necessary to have a strong national consensus that transcends political differences and to wage a unified fight against terror. This is precisely what the Congress and allied parties failed to recognize and have, thereby, presented to SIMI on a platter the space which it desperately needed to organize and operate.
The irreparable damage done by the Congress-led UPA dispensation to national security may be summarized as follows:
- The political patronage extended to SIMI by the Congress has confused the nation about its true character and has enabled the terror outfit to gain and reinforce its foothold.
- The Prime Minister's certificate to Pakistan that it was a victim of terror like India has obscured the real fact that it is the fountainhead of terror and has thereby reduced the international pressure on it to roll back its support to terrorism.
- By taking a negative position on anti-terror laws like the POTA, the UPA government has imposed a strong handicap on the security agencies in fighting terror.
- While there is a stringent law against organised crime in Congress-ruled state Maharashtra, the Central Government has declined to give Presidential sanction to similar laws for Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Indeed, only on September 01, 2008 MOS (Home), Shri Sriprakash Jaiswal, said in Lucknow “We will turn down a similar law in UP just as we turned it down in Gujarat”.
- By its above actions the Congress Party has undermined prospects of national consensus on the issue of terror.
In its anxiety to win back the vote banks it has lost, the Congress party has subordinated the issue of terror to its pseudo secular politics.
The BJP urges the government to take immediate and effective steps to redeem the situation. BJP demands that the Congress government should;
a) Accept that SIMI and such other organizations constitute a grave threat to national security and that the Government has failed to contain and counter it. It should apologise to the nation for its failure and inability to protect innocent lives;
b) Re-enact POTA and other legislations to reign in terrorist outfits;
c) Take decision on Afzal Guru's death sentence without any further delay;
d) Place all facts relating to subversive activities of SIMI and terrorist organisations operating under other names (such as the Indian Mujahideen), before the courts to ensure that the ban is continued and implement it with total resolve and determination;
e) Take appropriate measures to choke the channels of terrorist funding and weapons, stop training camps of the terrorists in different parts of the country, effectively manage the borders to control infiltration and take strong action against overground supporters and front organizations of subversive organizations.
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