'Forget minority-majority politics in terror fight'

New Delhi, Aug 29: Accusing the government of failing to contain extremism and appeasing minorities, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha L K Advani today asked the government to forget the ''minority-majority politics'' while dealing with the scourge of terrorism.

''Terrorist is a terrorist, no matter which religion he belongs to,'' he said while speaking at an adjournment motion on the recent bomb blasts in Hyderabad which had claimed 42 lives.

Mr Advani came down heavily on the government for its appeasement of minorities for the sake of vote-bank politics.

''Appeasement of a community is nothing but appeasement of terrorism...Terrorism should not be linked to any community...Vote bank politics should be stopped,'' the former Home Minister said.

There was furore in the house when Mr Advani charged the government with ''protecting'' Mohammed Afzal Guru, the main accused in the Parliament attack case, whose death sentence is pending before the President.

He said it was the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) which had helped to bring the terrorists who attacked Parliament before law and Afzal was ordered to be hanged.

In this context, Mr Advani suggested that special laws should be passed to counter-terrorism which had been claiming hundreds of innocent lives in the country.

He said the BJP-led NDA government had framed the POTA when the UN Security council had asked the member-countries to put in place strong laws to tackle terrorism. However, when the Congress-led UPA government came to power it had repealed it.

Mr Advani's 45-minute long speech was frequently interrupted by the treasury benches and the Left members.

There were uproarious scenes when Mr Advani criticised the government for ordering head count of Muslims in armed forces and the efforts of the government to provide reservation in education and jobs on the basis of religion.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi regretted that Mr Advani was charging the government with communalising terrorism. The entire country knew that it was Mr Advani who had sown the seeds of communalism through his 'rath yatra' and the BJP leader had never condemned incidents such as the attack on Christian missionaries, Mr Dasmunsi said.

It was not the UPA government which had released terrorists from prison and escorted them to Afghanistan, he said, referring to the hostage crisis involving the hijack of the Indian Airlines flight, he said.

The country owed a lot to the people of Hyderabad who were not provoked by the blasts, he said.

POTA and TADA had failed to prevent terrorist attacks on Raghunath Temple and Amarnath yatris, he said.

Mr Mohammad Salim (CPI-M) sought proper security at public functions and impartial and effective investigation into terrorist attacks.

Initiating the debate, Mr Prabhunath Singh (JD-U) asked the UPA government to bring back the Prevention Of Terrorist Activities (POTA) Act to check incidents of bomb blasts similar to those that rocked Hyderabad last week.

He said it was shocking that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had talked of creating a special fund for victims of terrorist violence, instead of taking measures to foil such attempts by Naxalites and terrorists who had infested almost all the states.

Earlier in the morning, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had admitted the ''Adjournment Motion: Failure of the government to contain terrorist violence in the country as evidenced by a series of recent events, the latest being the twin blasts in Hyderabad in which 42 innocent citizens lost their lives and 50 were injured.'' The motion had been moved by Mr Prabhunath Singh and several other opposition members.

The JD(U) leader said the Prime Minister's statement had shaken the confidence of the people in the government as it amounted to admitting that the Centre was not capable of checking terrorism.

He said the UPA government had revoked POTA for merely deriving political mileage, without any concern for the deteriorating internal security situation.

Home Minister Shivraj Patil was only making stereotyped statements in the House without showing any result on the ground, he said.

Mr Mohan Singh(SP), condemning the recent Hyderabad blasts, said that demonstrated the government's failure to check the menace of terrorism and give a sense of security to the people. He asserted that terrorism could not be contained unless the Government showed a strong will to deal with it. Calling for strong anti-terror legislation, Mr Singh said the Government always got away by saying that some foreign agencies were behind such blasts. If that was the case why it did not snap ties with the neighbouring countries where such forces had their bases, he asked.

Mr K Yerran Naidu (TDP) demanded the resignation of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy for failing to check recurrence of such incidents in the state. He said the law and order situation was deteriorating in the state by the day.

Mr Devendra Prasad Yadav (RJD) called for a joint effort by all political parties and people to fight extremism and suggested that no particular community be blamed for terror activities. He said there was also a need to build mutual trust among different communities.

Mr Chandrakant Khare (Shiv Sena) regretted that some innocent students from Maharashtra, who had gone to Hyderabad on a study tour, were also killed in the twin blasts. He said there was a conspiracy to destabilise the country's economy and squarely blamed Pakistan and Bangladesh for it.

He said by hanging Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru the government must send a strong message to terrorists that they would never be pardoned for their heinous acts.

Mr Braja Kishore Tripathy (BJD), condemning the August 25 pair of bombings in Hyderabad, regretted that terrorists were striking at will and the intelligence and security agencies had failed to nab them. He charged the Centre with not taking strong action against terrorists out of political considerations. The NDA government, he said, had begun a drive to dismantle terror infrastructure but the UPA government was not pursuing it.

Participating in the discussion, Mr S Sudhakar Reddy (CPI) said members should not try to give a communal colour to the issue. ''This is a heinous crime and we all condemn this.'' Prof V K Malhotra (BJP) said the number of people killed in India due to terrorists acts was more than the number of people killed together in Central America, South America, North America and Eurasia but still ''we are saying that we have foiled the terrorists designs to break our society and the country at the cost of sacrificing our people''.

Mr Nikhil Kumar (Cong) suggested immediate completion of the remaining fence work on the Indo-Bangladesh border to prevent infiltration of people who were mostly found to be involved in acts of terrorism.

Prof M Ramadoss (PMK) urged the Government to set up a Special Task force to look into the genesis of terror acts. ''The committee should also go into the social, cultural, religion and other aspects involving terror acts,'' he added.

Mr Madhu Gaur Yakshi (Cong) said terrorists have no religion or caste and that is reflected in the fact that they have neither spared a temple or a mosque in their acts of violence.

Sayed Shahnawaz Hussain (BJP) said terrorists are now targeting the iconic IT city of Hyderabad.

Mr Ram Kripal Yadav (RJD) said it was very strange to talk about bringing back POTA when the Parliament House itself was attacked when POTA was in effect.

Mr Subroto Bose (AIFB) also participated.

UNI