BJP slams left govt over alleged inaction against PFI

The BJP on Tuesday attacked Kerala's CPI(M)-led LDF government over its alleged inaction against the Popular Front of India whose role has been alleged in radicalising Muslim youths in Kerala.

BJP national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP, GVL Narasimha Rao alleged that the state government was not taking steps to ban the PFI even after the state police pointed out its role in radicalising the Muslim youth and sending them as recruits for the Islamic State (ISIS) from Kerala.

"I want to ask the state government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who also holds the Home Ministry portfolio, why are you not listening to your own professional force (state police)," Rao told the media here.

The BJP spokesperson's statement comes days after the Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police O P Singh said they had written to the Union Home Ministry, seeking a ban on the PFI after its Uttar Pradesh head, Wasim, and 16 other activists were arrested for allegedly masterminding the violence in Lucknow during the anti-CAA protests.

Attacking the CPI(M) over the Citizenship Amendment Act, Rao also alleged that the Left party was playing a "double game" in the issue.

Rao accused the chief minister of "hypocrisy and ignorance", claiming Vijayan's party leader Prakash Karat had earlier backed citizenship for minorities being persecuted in neighbouring countries, but was protesting today after the Narendra Modi government enacted a law in this regard.

Karat had written to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2012 supporting citizenship for persecuted minorities from Bangladesh, Rao claimed.

"I would like to appeal to the great people of Kerala, to kindly see through this double game, what the Left Front has said when they were in the Opposition.

What has been their stand with regard to this very specific issues in the past and how are they pretending to be a different party today," he added.