Reintroduce POTA says Venkaiah Naidu

Chennai, July 15: Senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu today demanded the Congress led UPA government at the Centre to reintroduce POTA to check increasing acts of terrorism in the country.

Mr Naidu, who flagged off a rally by the party here to condemn the recent serial bomb blasts in Mumbai said similar protest rallies were being held through out the country.

He alleged that keeping vote banks in their minds, the UPA Government repealed POTA and was now inviting trouble.

He alleged so long as the infrastructure of terrorism continued to operate from Pakistan there was no scope for lasting peace.

He wanted that at any cost the terrorist groups like SIMI and other banned fundamentalist groups should be wiped out from the Indian soil.

He charged that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been asserting that he would contain terrorism whenever such incidents occur, but he has failed to take any action.

Referring to the Mumbai bomb blasts, Mr Naidu charged that these were not isolated incidences. They were choosing the targets with a definite purpose, and in the past two years, they have attacked Delhi and Mumbai-the national and technology capitals, respectively.

They tried to attack RSS headquarters in Nagpur.

Jammu and Kashmir was also suffering heavily due to continuous terrorist menace. Thus, it was clear that terrorists had launched an undeclared war with a larger design of destabilising India, he said and added it was the high time the UPA Government reintroduced POTA.

If the UPA Government did not like the name POTA, they can choose some other name, Mr Naidu suggested, sarcastically.

Mr Naidu who came down heavily on the UPA partners especially the DMK and the Left, alleged that they were bothered about acts of terrorism abroad in places like Iraq. But they did not bother about terrorism on the India soil.

He called for a National level movement for eradicating terrorism at gross roots level.

Later, a delegation led by Tamil Nadu BJP President Mr C P Radhakrishnan met the Tamil Nadu Governor Surjit Singh Barnala and presented a memorandum to him in this regard.

In the memorandum, Mr Radhakrishnan said the party fully shared the sense of shock and courage generated by the terrorist attack at Mumbai recently. It was obvious that the blasts in Mumbai were far better coordinated. ''Executing such an attack on seven running trains at seven different places within a short span of 15 minutes, would not have been possible without a deep-rooted conspiracy and planning.'' he said.

UNI