Terror strikes have become a routine affair now. It is serial blasts by jihadis, like last week in Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi in UP all within a span of 30 minutes, which create a furore. Eight out of 14 people who died were advocates. That advocates were targeted had a reason to it which we will discuss later.

The terror strikes are followed by bandh, a usual chorus of condemnations and editorials in the newspapers. All these continue for a few days and then the Government, police and the public forget about it till terrorists strike again. This has been going on for decades.

This time, a media house in the Capital published a front-page condemnation with big banner headlines, "Sleeping at the Wheels" with a matching photograph of Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. The daily wrote: "This man does not deserve to be Home Minister, he is just no good when it comes to dealing with terrorists or terrorism. Shivraj Patil caught flat-footed again as 14 die in UP blast."

I think it is a little too harsh on Patil. Why blame him alone? It is the Congress, the UPA and its supporters the Left who are to be blamed; for they framed the policy towards terrorism and the terrorists at the very beginning of the formation of UPA Government. They decided to go soft on terrorism and terrorists. They repealed POTA which was especially Act designed to deal with terrorism. This is not just a point but a package targeted to consolidate and recapture Muslim vote-bank for the UPA.

During these 44 months of the UPA regime, we have seen dozens of Muslim appeasements and deliberate softness towards proven terrorists. There are many examples. One may recall when the Parliament was attacked. Many Ministers and MP could have died, had the Delhi Police jawans not fought them on the second line of defence, as the terrorists had already breached the first line of defence. All the terrorists were killed. Half a dozen jawans of Delhi Police were killed. The mastermind of the strike, Afzal Guru was sentenced to death even the Supreme Court. Now it seems that the Congress has decided to ignore this death sentence.

The repeal of POTA was a comprehensive policy statement where a number of decisions on soft peddling of terrorism were hidden, including not hanging of Afzal Guru on the appointed date. We have seen how the UPA Government buckled in to the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir Gulam Nabi Azad's statement that if Afzal Guru was hanged Srinagar would burn. So, why blame Patil alone for any particular act of omission and commission?

The whole approach to the problem of terrorism is based on absolute non-seriousness as if it is not a problem at all. It apprehends that if terrorism is tackled seriously, the UPA and its allies would lose Muslim votes. That means there exists a political premium for ineffectiveness in handling terrorism. So why blame just Patil?

The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has blamed the Centre for the serial bomb blasts in the three cities. The provocation for this statement may have come from Sri Prakash Jaiswal's statement that the Centre has cautioned the State Government about the possibility of the terrorist attacks at public places. The Intelligence input did warrant serious analysis in the prevailing atmosphere in UP wherein advocates in many courts have decided not to take up cases of terrorists.

I do not think that it required a CIA Intelligence to chase the input of 'public places' to 'court campuses'. This could have been done either by Central Intelligence or State Intelligence. Regarding increasing and innovative terrorism, we have a number of inadequacies.

First, we are short of police personnel to deal with terrorism. In Uttar Pradesh, we have 94 policemen for every lakh of population. By this number the State cannot cope up with the problem of terrorism.

The national average is 193 policemen for every lakh of population. International norms suggest 250 policemen per one lakh population. There are many western countries which have 500 policemen per one lakh population.

As far as Intelligence is concerned, Girish Saxena Committee has dealt with the deficiencies and offered a number of recommendations which too suffer from resource crunch.

To cap all deficiencies, we have legal deficiency after the repeal of POTA. After all, the UN had passed a resolution (UNSC Resolution 1373) recommending stringent laws to deal with terrorism in every country.

But, here in India we have a Government which has taken a legal apparatus away from the hands of police administration for dealing with terrorism. That is why I say, why just blame Shivraj Patil.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, December 02, 2007