news details |
|
|
| Centre ridicules Mulayam Yadav's 'unwarranted verdict' | | UP CM is batting for SIMI | | NEW DELHI, JULY 14: The governmentof India has taken strong exception to what is described as the "unwarranted verdict" by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav, on the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). SIMI, according to Mulayam Yadav, is not a terrorist organisation.
The Centre banned the SIMI in September 2001. Between then and now Mulayam Singh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party (SP) appeared totally unwilling to pick up cudgels with the Centre against the ban. Mulayam Yadav's pro-SIMI stance is the outcome of the tremendous importance of Muslim votebank in Uttar Pradesh (UP).
And as all eyes are focused on the upcoming Assembly polls in UP, Mulayam Yadav seems unwilling to endorse the government of India's views against the SIMI's "sinister" role in recent times. A senior Ministerial source commented on Friday in the course of an informal chat with EARLY TIMES: "Worse still, UP Chiefr Minister has brushed aside the Centre's directive to clamp down on SIMI for its supected involvement in the July 11 Mumbai carnage".
And the Ministerial source regretted: "In spite of a set of inputs available with the UP government in relation to the increased activity of the operatives of the banned organisation, the UP Chief Minister gave a virtual clean chit to SIMI by saying that the banned outfit was not found to be involved in the two main terrorist incidents in the State". Mulayam Yadav's brother, Shivpal Singh, who is UP's PWD Minister, declared: "SIMI is not a terrorist organisation".
The pronouncement appeared to be meant to save Muslim votebank in UP, where a new Muslim group has been formed to challenge Mulayam Yadav and his Samajwadi Party. At a time when the recently-formed Muslim Front has begun to poach on his Muslim votebank, Mulayam Yadav has, much against the government of India's official stand, come out in support of the banned SIMI. The UP Chief Minister seems ready to risk a confrontation with the Centre.
The Ministerial source wanted Mulayam Yadav to take due note of the most signifcant development of last week: Supreme Court upheld the September 2001 ban on SIMI, particularly because the organisation has left a trail of linkages--SIMI enjoyed a close working relatgionship with Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh and its students wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir.
This apart, the SIMI had also developed a new nexus with Bangladesh's Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami, which has already been found to be closely allied to Al Qaeda. The Ministerial source also wanted Mulayam Yadav to recall that Mohamed Zubair, a resident of Bahraich in UP, who was involved in the 2005 Shramjeevi Express explosion near Jaunpur and the Varanasi serial blasts of March 7, 2006, was subsequentlyh gunned down in Handwara area of Kashmir. Zubair was also a SIMI cadre.
The SIMI, according to a set of intelligence inputs, has already forged a working relationship with dreaded terrorist outfit, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). The number of SIMI ansars (cadres) has increased in spite of the continuing ban on the organisation. More importantly, groups of these ansars have, intelligence inputs poiont out, also joined hands with the cadres of some other Islamist radicals across the country.
The UP Congress unit may not be assertive and powerful to outwit the Samajwadi Party. But it (Congress) has injected a new elemnt into the situation by its allegation that Mulayam Singh government had oppoised ban on the SIMI. Congress spokesman, Abhilesh Pratap Singh, stated that his party had, under the Right to Information Act, sought the letters written by Uttar Pradesh tgo the Centre advocating the lifting of the ban on the SIMI.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
