politics | india politics

Instead of election-oriented planning and a sharper focus on economic reforms, terrorism has become the central agenda for the UPA government with intelligence and geo-political assessments indicating that terror groups are planning more attacks against Indian targets in the coming months.
The back-to-back serial blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad on Friday and Saturday have resulted in terrorism setting the post-trust vote agenda of the government which was looking to move on governance-related issues that had fallen victim to the paralysis induced by the Left-UPA showdown over the India-US nuclear deal.
With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and home minister Shivraj Patil holding a high-level meeting to review the internal security situation, the government is gearing to what it feels is the clear intention of jihadi groups who operate out of Pakistan and Bangladesh to attack high value targets in Indian metros. Many of these groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed have Pakistan links and Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami has a base in Bangladesh.
The blasts may bring about a re-orientation of political priorities as terrorism cannot be accorded anything less than top priority, all the more in a year studded with elections including assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir. While the claims of the outfit that calls itself Indian Mujahideen are being scrutinised carefully, the overall objective of jihadi groups to demoralise security forces, trigger public insecurity and deepen the communal divide is not in doubt.
The government had hoped that its political focus after winning the July 22 trust vote would see it concentrate on the implementation of a populist
agenda while also hoping for inflation to level off by the year-end. This was pretty much key to the Congress' plans with the party also banking on electoral returns in BJP-ruled states which face elections this year even as the Centre looked keen to project a 'we-are-back-to-business' signal with reforms. The Bangalore-Ahmedabad bombings have altered the script.
Sources agreed that if the government continued to appear on the backfoot over combating terrorism, there would be a political price to pay. The high impact that terrorism has on the public mind ensures that security, or lack of it, occupies a considerable part of the popular mind space. The warnings of the jihadi outfits that carried out the attacks last week that there was more to come had a ring of authenticity about them.
Well-placed sources said the assessments offered by intelligence agencies and a review of the situation in India's neighbourhood presented a bleak and challenging picture. There was no alternative to stepping up intelligence collection and internal vigil as the risk of terror strikes was high with the situation in Afghanistan and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border not showing any signs of improving. The region remained under Taliban-al Qaida control and offered a haven for anti-India groups as well.
The recent attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul pointed to the threat that Taliban, acting in cahoots with Pakistani agencies like ISI, posed to Afghanistan. The situation in Bangladesh is not very encouraging either with HuJI successfully using its bases in that country to launch operations against India. The government's assessment also acknowledges and takes into account the deep roots LeT, Jaish and HuJI have taken aided by the cooperation of radical groups like Simi.

Labels: Indian Politics