Conflicting views are emerging over the proposal to ban Sanatan Sanstha, a right wing group allegedly linked to the killing of Left leader in Maharashtra Govind Pansare and 2009 Madgaon bomb blast in Goa.
While former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said that a proposal was sent to the central government in 2011 for declaring Sanatan Sanstha as an outlawed outfit, former Union Home Secretary R K Singh said Maharashtra government had never got back to the Union Home Ministry on certain queries related to the proposal.
"We had decided to send a proposal to the union government requesting it to ban Sanathan Sanstha under UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act). That proposal was sent to the Union Home Ministry on April 11, 2011," Chavan, the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, told reporters.
Singh, now a BJP MP from Bihar, countered it and said declaring an organisation outlawed under UAPA needs sufficient evidence against the outfit showing its involvement in terror activities.
"We had written to Maharashtra government asking certain queries related to the proposal. But they never got back," he said.
The former Home Secretary claimed the then Home Minister P Chidambaram had observed in the file that there seems to be no evidence against Sanathan Sanstha to declare it as a banned organisation.
Singh's predecessor, former Union Home Secretary G K Pillai, who demitted office on June 30, 2011, said that he did not remember any file, with the proposal to ban Sanathan Sanstha, coming to him.
