Nepal's Maoists, rebel groups pose threat to India, says Jaswant Singh

New Delhi, Sept 22 (ANI): Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh has said that the rise of Maoists in Nepal and the rebel groups taking sanctuary there pose a threat to India.

Singh said the developments marked a "strategic error" on part of New Delhi.

"There are 109 armed groups operating. 109 armed groups in Terai of Nepal. Those armed groups are operating in Nepal. It cannot leave India unaffected. I believe that permitting the ascendancy, as it were, of the Maoists in Nepal, is as significant a strategic error by the government as much as strategic error, whether of the rise of influence of People's Republic of China or the unrest in Jammu and Kashmir," said Singh, speaking at a book launch in New Delhi.

A study says Nepal's Terai plains have witnessed a proliferation of armed militant groups and criminal gangs.

According to the Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), a Kathmandu-based human rights organisation, there are currently more than 100-armed groups in Terai.

Meanwhile, taking at dig at his former party, the BJP, for ousting him for writing a book - 'Jinnah: India-Partition Independence,'-, Singh said that writing is an extremely hazardous profession.

"Writing a book seems to have become an extremely hazardous business. I am sure you would examine the possibility of all the perils that face you in writing books in India these days," said Singh.

Singh was expelled from the BJP in August for writing a book sympathetic to Mohammed Ali Jinnah. (ANI)