New Delhi: The Congress on Monday questioned the Centre why it had not banned the Popular Front of India (PFI) so far though the ruling BJP kept blaming the organization for disrupting communal harmony.
“We are not opposing a ban on PFI. Who is stopping the government from doing so?,” the Leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Council, BK Hariprasad told ETV Bharat. The Congress leader was reacting to the charges leveled by BJP president JP Nadda on Sunday that the Congress was linked to the PFI and had a role in the recent instances of communal violence in some states.
The BJP chief referred to the instances of violence in Rajasthan’s Karauli and Delhi’s Jahangirpuri recently, which had prompted the opposition parties to jointly target the Centre over law and order. Nadda also blamed the Leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly K Siddaramaiah for releasing some PFI activists from prison when he was chief minister earlier.
“It has become a fashion for the BJP to blame the Congress for everything. If they are concerned about the safety of the nation, why don’t they act against the PFI? The PFI has been propped up by the BJP,” said Hariprasad. Joining the issue, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shirnate said the government had been only talking about banning the PFI over the past eight years but had not taken any action so far.
“You have been in power over the past eight years at the Centre and in several states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. You keep talking about banning PFI. If you ban PFI, then who will you blame for violence and to deflect public attention,” she said. The Congress spokesperson pointed out that since August 2021, MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had been talking about banning PFI, while in December 2020 Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Supreme Court that the government was about to ban PFI.
Further, she said that BJP’s youth wing chief and MP Tejaswi Surya had also asked a question in the Lok Sabha why the PFI was not being banned to which the government had replied that whenever evidence will come before it, the Centre will take necessary action. “Are you looking for some auspicious moment to do that? Do not try to deflect public attention, take action,” she said. Shrinate reminded the Centre that on February 4, 1948, then home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had banned the RSS for disrupting communal harmony within five days of Mahatma Gandhi’s killing.
