Come out with White Paper on SIMI, Advani tells Govt

Stepping up the offensive against the UPA Government's all-round failure in tackling terrorism, the main Opposition BJP has demanded a white paper on the activities of the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

The BJP's faces for war-against-terror, LK Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, made a joint appearance here on Wednesday to unleash a fierce attack on the Congress-led UPA Government and asked it to apologise to the nation for allowing a free run of the terrorists.
The party demanded re-enactment of POTA and an early decision on the Gujarat Control of Organised Crime Act, besides steps to choke terror funding and implementing the death sentence of Parliament attack convict Mohammad Afzal Guru.
It was not just a coincidence that Advani chose Modi to be on his side while talking to the Centre over the growing tentacles of the terror outfits. "If I were supposed to speak on economic issues, I would have invited Yashwant Sinha or Jaswant Singh. When it comes to terrorism, Modi is the man without whom we could not have got such leads into the blast cases as we did after investigation by his police," Advani said, when asked if their joint appearance meant more than what meets the eye.
Modi by his side, Advani went on counting the failures of the UPA Government on economic, administrative, political and internal security fronts. "The last four years of the UPA regime don't speak of a single achievement. The Government not only failed on the security front, but its policies have emboldened the terrorists," Advani told reporters.
Modi shared with journalists some information derived from the accused in the Gujarat serial blasts, the most prominent being the deep-rooted network of the Indian Mujahideen in nine States and its decision to retain people over 30 (something which was not allowed in SIMI). "Even the youth from affluent and educated families are getting trapped into this web of terrorism. Only a tough law can save them," Modi told reporters.
The BJP leaders wondered as to why the Centre was sitting over separate Acts passed by the Assemblies of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh for having a special law against terrorism when, at the same time, such a law existed in Maharashtra. "You (Centre) either want it or you don't want it. The message has to be clear. It is a democracy and things cannot go the way they are going. Tell us what you want," they said. Advani disagreed that the Centre's silence had anything to do with the fact that these demands were made by the BJP-ruled States.
"The Government lacks the will. They repealed POTA for the entire country and not only for the BJP-ruled States. It is pure vote bank consideration of the Congress and its allies," Advani asserted.
The BJP leader believed that the Congress had undermined the prospects of a national consensus on the issue of terror by its actions and in its anxiety to win back the vote banks it had lost, the Congress subordinated the issue of terror to its pseudo-secular politics.
Modi disagreed that the anti-terror laws were against any particular community and wondered why such voices were heard from a section of political parties in India, when no such statement came from politicians in the foreign countries having such tough laws.
The leaders pointed out that for the battle against terror to succeed, it was necessary to have a strong national consensus transcending political differences and to wage a unified fight against terror. "This is precisely what the Congress and allied parties failed to recognise and have presented on a platter to SIMI the space which it desperately needed to organise and operate," they said.
A joint statement released by the two BJP leaders reads: "The Congress-led Government, by failing to produce full evidence before the Unlawful Activities Prevention Tribunal under the UAP Act, has sabotaged the ban on SIMI and it has taken the intervention of the apex court to retrieve the situation. The nation is asking the question as to why on three occasions the tribunal could endorse the ban on SIMI 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-pedaling the issue at the highest levels of the Government?"