The Centre may have ordered a clampdown on SIMI, but the UP government feels the ban on the organisation is unjustified.
LUCKNOW: The Centre may have ordered a clampdown on the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) after evidence of its involvement in the Mumbai train blasts, but the Uttar Pradesh government feels the ban on the organisation is unjustified.
"SIMI has not been active in the state for several years," UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav told reporters here on Thursday. He also ruled out the involvement of SIMI in the serial blasts which shook the holy city of Varanasi in March this year. Asked about what the government was doing to clamp down on SIMI, he said: "The ban on SIMI has been imposed by the Central government not by the state government."
On June 21 this year, the state government wrote to the Centre that continuing the ban on SIMI was unjustified as the organisation had not been active in UP. The Centre had earlier this year asked for the state's views before issuing the notification to continue the ban imposed on SIMI by the then Atal government in 2002.
What is even more alarming is that the Mulayam regime is preparing to withdraw the cases against SIMI activists involved in the Kanpur riots of March 2001. Sixteen people, including a senior district administration official, were killed in the riots.
The state SIMI chief Mohammed Aamir and the Kanpur city SIMI chief Suleiman are among the main accused. Aamir is in jail after he surrendered in the riots case this year on April 25, the date on which SIMI was founded in Aligarh in 1977. Suleiman and another accused Rehan are absconding and carry a reward of Rs 2,500 each on their heads.
A senior police official told DNA that the Mulayam regime's political expediency in linking SIMI with the minority votebank could prove ominous for the state.
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