Just days after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided Popular Front of India (PFI) offices and individuals across the country, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs announced a ban on the organisation and its associates for five years. The other affiliates/front organisations banned include Rehab India Foundation, Campus Front of India, All India Imams Council, National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations, National Women’s Front, Junior Front, Empower India Foundation, and Rehab Foundation, Kerala.
A Ministry of Home Affairs notification dated September 27 said that “the PFI and its associates….have been pursuing a secret agenda to radicalise a particular section of society” and that “there has been instances of international linkages of the PFI with global terrorist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”.
The Ministry also said that some of the founding members of PFI were leaders of the Students Islamic Movement of India and that it had linkages with Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, pointing out that both are banned organisations in India.
The government outlined the immediate necessity for such a ban, saying that the organisation will “(i) continue its subversive activities thereby disturbing public order and undermining the constitutional set up of the country (ii) encourage and enforce terror-based regressive regime (iii) continue propagating anti-national sentiments and radicalise a particular section of society with the intention to create disaffection against the country and (iv) aggravate activities which are detrimental to integrity, security and sovereignty of the country.”
The Centre also said that the “State governments of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Gujarat”, all BJP-ruled States, had recommended that PFI be banned.
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