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Dismiss Modi govt, ban VHP, BD: People's Front

"If SIMI can be banned, then why not VHP and the Bajrang Dal as they are the root cause of the riots," Front leaders told reporters in Delhi after their return from the trouble-torn state.

They said the current spell of disturbances in the state made it a fit case for invoking provisions under Article 355 and demanded that the state be handed over to the army.

A Front delegation, including Amar Singh, Raj Babbar, Shabana Azmi (all Samajwadi Party) and Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) had visited some parts of Gujarat on Friday for an on-the-spot study.

While Amar Singh demanded immediate dismissal of the Modi government, Yechury said that normalcy could not be expected till Modi held the reins.

The violence could not have endured without state government patronage, Yechury said.

The Front leaders said that the Centre was speaking in two voices - while Minister of State for Home I D Swami suspected the ISI to be behind the violence, Minister of State for External Affairs Omar Abdullah ruled out such a possibility.

Stating that the situation in the state was very tense, Singh said people had lost confidence in the state government 'as it failed to restore normalcy in the strife-torn areas'.

Accusing the BJP government of turning a blind eye to communal discord, film star-turned-politicians Raj Babbar and Shabana Azmi said innocent people should not be used as cannon fodder for narrow political gains.

The Front leaders said it was highly condemnable that most of those arrested in connection with the violence belonged to the minority community, which was actually the target of the rioters.

They denied the charge of being more concerned about the repercussions following the Godhra carnage than about the people killed in the train burning incident.

PTI

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