Modi should resign for failure to counter terrorism: Congress

Ahmedabad, Sep 4 (UNI) Lashing out at BJP leaders L K Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for not putting up a brave fight against terrorism and pursuing their own political agenda, state Congress today said Mr Advani should ask Mr Modi to step down for his failure to effectively counter terrorism.

Addressing a news conference here, Gujarat Congress spokesperson Arjun Modhvadia said Gujarat government had information about role of SIMI leader Safdar Nagori.

Nagori, who is being interrogated by the Gujarat police for his role in the recent serial blasts in Ahmedabad, and his accomplices were arrested by Madhya Pradesh police in the last week of February 2008. Nagori had admitted before the MP police that they had planned blasts in Jaipur and Ahmedabad. Intelligence Bureau had given a copy of this confession to Mr Modi and State Home Minister Amit Shah at that time, still the state government slept over it and took no action, Modhvadia claimed.

He said that Mr Advani demands a white paper on SIMI but he is not taking any action against his protege Mr Modi.

He said that some major terrorist attacks took place during the NDA rule and Congress leader Ms Sonia Gandhi was the first national leader to reach out to terror affected people in all places including Kashmir and elsewhere.

Mr Modhavadia said that Mr Advani and Mr Modi raise issue of delay in the execution of death sentence to Afzal Guru, convicted in Parliament attack case. But they conveniently forget the fact that they maintained a deafening silence when three terrorists forced into a house in Jammu and took eight persons as hostages, a few day ago.

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