E-Paper
No immediate plans to ban PFI, SDPI: Jnanendra
The change in the government’s stance comes just a day after Jnanendra said that discussions on banning PFI and SDPI are in progress and the Centre has to take a call in this regard.
Home minister Araga Jnanendra on Monday said there are no immediate plans to ban the Popular Front of India (PFI) and the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). Talking to reporters in Dakshina Kannada, he said instead of banning the organisations, the government will track their members closely.
The change in the government’s stance comes just a day after Jnanendra said that discussions on banning PFI and SDPI are in progress and the Centre has to take a call in this regard. The state is making necessary preparations and a report will be submitted to the Centre soon, Jnanendra had said on Saturday in Shivamogga. Explaining the rationale behind the decision, Jnanendra said if SDPI and PFI are banned, the same people will build another organisation.“Banning the organisation does not fall under the powers of the state government. The Centre is closely watching their activities and will take a decision accordingly,” he said.
“It is common to witness frenzied activities during the election year. Except for the incidents at Shivamogga and Aland, the law and order situation in the state is good.The police department is keeping an eye on the compliance with the interim order of the state high court in hijab issue,” he pointed out.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is currently investigating over 100 PFI members cases across India, and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is probing the organisation for allegedly funding the 2020 riots in Delhi as well as the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
One of the biggest obstacles posed by SDPI for Congress is the outfit’s influence in taking over Congress’ Muslim vote bank in coastal Karnataka.While the SDPI didn’t win any assembly constituencies in the region, their vote share saw an increase. In the 2013 Karnataka assembly election, SDPI got a vote share of 3.2% and by the 2018 election, the vote share increased to 10.5%. SDPI also won six seats in Karnataka’s urban local body elections in December 2021.
Political analyst Sandeep Shastri said that the rise of SDPI has a clear impact on Congress’s vote bank. “The SDPI will clearly split the minority vote. This explains Congress’ soft Hindutva approach in the recent years and also demands to ban SDPI,” he said.
Previously (on February 23), the Congress had also questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government over the delay in banning PFI and SDPI.
“Basavaraj Bommai has said that the government has sufficient grounds to ban the organisations. BJP is in power, so what prevents them from banning PFI?” asked Opposition leader Siddaramaiah. .
Karnataka state SDPI president Elyas Muhammed Thumbe said if there is a proposal to ban PFI or SDPI, the Congress should also be banned as the party’s workers were also arrested in DJ Halli violence incident. “The SDPI was accused of 27 political murders in the coastal belt which has come down to 13 after police investigations, and even in these, some murders were the result of personal issues or family disputes. We are a democratic political party working with people,’’ he said.
As per the chargesheets filed by the Karnataka police before the courts, the PFI members have been involved in the political murders of the four RSS workers in the state.
Two murders were reported in the coastal city of Mangaluru, one case each was reported in Bengaluru and Mysuru. In 2016, five people, including Bengaluru district president PFI Azim Sheriff, were arrested for the murder of RSS man Rudresh in Bengaluru’s Shivajinagar. All these cases are under trial.
The PFI came into highlight in Karnataka following the violent clash in Bengaluru’s DJ Halli area on 11 August 2020. The riots were triggered following a Facebook post by Naveen P, nephew of Congress MLA from Pulakeshinagar constituency R Akhanda Srinivas Murthy, in DJ Halli and KG Halli areas. Senior PFI workers were booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) Act and the case was handed over to NIA.
Despite the mounting cases against the PFI, one of the reasons why the ban was not proposed is owing to the political equations in the state. In the 2018 assembly polls, out of the six seats in Uttara Kannada district, the BJP won four and took its tally to five when Shivaram Hebbar joined the party from the Congress following the political crisis a year later. In Udupi district, the BJP bagged all five seats, and in Dakshina Kannada, it won seven out of eight, leaving the Congress with just one.
However, in the 2013 assembly elections, the Congress won three seats in Udupi, seven in Dakshina Kannada, and three in Uttara Kannada. The Congress was hoping to improve its performance in the region in the upcoming election, by taking back some of the seats lost in 2018.
