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UP to crack down on ISI

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

The Uttar Pradesh government proposes to crack down on the increasing network of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence in Uttar Pradesh following the recent hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane.

Pressing for the passage of the UP Regulation of Public, Religious Buildings and Places Bill-2000 in the state assembly, Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta openly lambasted the ISI.

The bill was passed smoothly after some debate by a few representatives of the main opposition parties - the Samajwadi Party and Congress. The opposition, however, failed to put up any concrete arguments against the spirit of the bill that empowers the state government to regulate the construction as well as use of religious places in Uttar Pradesh.

While SP leader Reoti Raman Singh charged that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government has failed to curb ISI activities on the Indo-Nepal border, Congress leader Pramod Tiwari flayed the regime for bringing in a new legislation only to harass Muslims.

Yet, none disputed the government's claim of swift ISI infiltration in different parts of Uttar Pradesh.

If intelligence reports were to be believed, the ISI had spread its tentacles in the state largely through the mushroom growth of madarsas, all along the highly porous Indo-Nepal border.

"While ISI agents could be booked under the existing provisions of criminal law, there was no way to check the rapid growth of such institutions which were functioning under the garb of madarsas ," a top intelligence official told rediff.com . He welcomed the government's move to restrict the construction of religious places as also the use of existing buildings for religious purposes.

"We cannot blame our innocent village folk for falling in the trap of ISI agents, who start by pumping in money for raising religious institutions; then identify the vulnerable ones before eventually buying them off with allurements."

The law will prevent new constructions besides curbing the use of buildings for religious purposes, thereby depriving the ISI of the cover it could find handy so far, the official pointed out.

The bill grants the ultimate power to the bureaucracy to disallow any such construction or the use of an existing building for religious purposes.

It provides that no permission would be granted if the district magistrate feels the construction was not in the interest of public order, morality and health. Permission, under the provisions of the bill, would also be refused if it interfered with the rights of any other religion or if the use of the building applied for is forbidden under the provisions of any law.

The existing law could not curb the growth of religious institutions along the Indo-Nepal border particularly in the districts of Bahraich, Pilibhit, Gonda and Siddharth Nagar over the past two or three years in particular.

The creation of an Indo-Nepal Border police by the Uttar Pradesh government has proved ineffective in checking the infiltration of ISI agents through Nepal as the Nepali administration failed to plug the vulnerable points.

With vast areas along the Indo-Nepal border covered by thick forests, guarded by a highly inadequate forest security, the border has been a conduit for smuggling of arms and ammunition besides heroin from Pakistan.

Confirming the largescale ISI infiltration in UP, a senior home department official said, "Of the 18 ISI units busted by the Indian security forces in 1999, as many as six were in UP."

"Religious institutions in certain places were being used to provide refuge to hardcore ISI agents after they had carried out their assigned destructive missions," he said.

He went on to add, "What was worse was that these institutions were trying to spoil a whole generation of Indian youth who have received indoctrination at these so-called centres of religious learning."

According to him, religious doctrines were deliberately distorted and twisted to impress the ISI versions upon young and virgin minds, who were easily misled into committing anti-national activities while money bags were dangled before them as incentives.

"Since Pakistan's involvement in the recently busted counterfeit Indian currency notes was now an open secret, money was no problem for the ISI. And once again Nepal has provided the easy passage," he said.

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