State Congress chief Ashok Chavan on Saturday demanded an “urgent” ban on Sanatan Sanstha even as his party leaders blamed each other for not imposing a ban on the radical Hindu outfit when they were in power both in Maharashtra and at the Centre. Sanatan Sanstha has been in news most recently with the arrest of one of its full-time members on September 16 in connection with the murder of veteran Communist leader Govind Pansare in Kolhapur early this year. In 2011, Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra had proposed a ban on Sanatan Sanstha when two of its members, Vikram Bhave and Ramesh Gadkari, were convicted in 2011 and awarded 10 years of life imprisonment for the bomb blast in the parking area of Gadkari Rangaytan auditorium in Thane on June 4, 2008. [related-post] The blast was carried out ostensibly to protest against a play “Amhi Satpute” which the outfit members claimed was showing Hindu Gods in poor light. The ban was never implemented. On Saturday, at a press conference in Pune, former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Congress MP Ashok Chavan demanded an “urgent” ban on Sanatan Sanstha.As per PTI reports, Congress leader and former CM Prithviraj Chavan on Friday said that the previous Congress-led government in the state had urged the UPA government at the Centre to ban the outfit in 2011, but the Home Ministry did not act upon it. Prithviraj Chavan’s party colleague and former Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, however, said if Chavan was serious about outlawing Sanatan Sanstha, he should have called him and asked him about that, instead of merely sending a report to the Centre. Shinde said he took over as Home Minister at the Centre only in 2013, but added that Chavan’s failure to take up the issue directly with the Centre reflected his “carelessness”. Asked why his government failed to ban the outfit when it was in power, Ashok Chavan said, “There was no need for a ban on Sanatan Sanstha when I was CM. But now, with murders of senior activists and the kind of objectionable reports being published (by Sanatan Prabhat), the situation is serious and there is an urgency to ban the organisations like Sanatan Sanstha. I am not aware of ban proposed by other leaders and what happened to it. So I cannot comment on it. You can talk to them (Shinde and Prithviraj Chavan)”. Sandeep Shinde, spokesperson of Sanatan Sanstha, said, “Even the Congress-NCP government, which always opposes us, could not produce any evidence against us. Thus, they could not ban us. The entire proposal to ban Sanatan Sanstha was only a conspiracy to defame the organisation.”
