Our parliamentary correspondent
NEW DELHI: Even as left parties, LJP and other secular parties fully backed home mnister P Chidambaram remark on saffron terrorism, the BJP and Shiv Sena today made ruckus over the issue in the Rajya Sabha leading to the two adjournment of the House. The two parties found isolated in protest against Chidambaram’s statement. The home minister too did not budge from his stand.
In his speech Wednesday at the meeting of state police chiefs, Chidambaram cautioned security and intelligence officials against continuing attempts of militants to infiltrate into India as well as the recently uncovered phenomenon of ‘saffron terrorism’.
Leader of Opposition in upper house Arun Jaitley said the home minister should not use the expression as there was no such phenomenon and religion references should be kept away.
“We expected the minister to come out with some vision on how he will deal with the Maoist violence and Kashmir problem instead of utilising this opportunity for doing exactly something which he should not have done,” Jaitly said.
Jaitly said that home minister should name those who are found to involved in terrorism and not give colour to the terror activities.
Backing Chidambaram LJP leader ram Vilas Paswan said what the home minister had said he must have said with responsibility about the saffron terror. He said that saffron terrorism is a big threat to the nation and it must be curbed iron handedly.
CPM’s Brinda Karat contested Jaitley’s remark that he was articulating the sentiments of a large section of the House. She said Jaitley was certainly not representing the whole House. “He should have condemned such terror in the name of Hindutva,” she said.
The issue was about groups claiming to be functioning in the name of Hindutva or using the word Hindu or Hindutva in describing themselves were accused of committing acts of terror, including bomb blasts at masjids, she said.
BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy told media persons that terror should not be linked with any religion and that it was most unfortunate that the Home Minister of the country kept making such statements. He said the Home Minister was generalising the issue of terror to brand a community.
Giving a new colour to terrorism congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said : “’Saffron, bhagwa or kesariya (Hindi words for saffron) is not an issue. The issue is terrorism. Terrorism does not have any colour. It has only one colour and it is black”
Radical Hindu organisations were suspected to have engineered the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer Sharif bombings