Politics Of Bans

Investigating agencies are yet to prove any terrorist links to the Sanstha

- Namrata Biji Ahuja

WHEN POLITICS takes centrestage, and finer elements of investigation and record-keeping by successive governments get drowned in loud calls for banning, it becomes a classic case of much ado about nothing. This is what appears to have happened in the case of the Sanatan Sanstha.

The first official proposal to ban the Sanstha was made by the Maharashtra government in April 2011 when Manmohan Singh was the prime minister. It was the Congress chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, who requested the Union home ministry to ban the Sanstha under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for indulging in terror activities and spreading fear and hatred.

Chavan told THE WEEK that, in early 2014, a second proposal was sent in the form of a 1,000-page dossier on the Sanstha’s activities and the cases against it. “We kept on pursuing the 2011 proposal to ban the Sanstha, and queries marked by the Union home ministry were duly answered. There were several rounds of communication till 2014. We have no idea what happened after that,” he said. Chavan resigned as chief minister after the Nationalist Congress Party pulled out of the ruling coalition before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Former Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde told THE WEEK that there had been no proposal to ban the Sanstha during his tenure. The proposal landed in the home ministry during the fag end of the tenure of his successor P. Chidambaram, who asked for more information.