Govt fails to send proposal on banning Sanatan Sanstha
The home department has been sending information regularly to the Union government.
Mumbai: The Devendra Fadnavis-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has not initiated a new proposal for banning Sanatan Sanstha. This government only addressed queries to the earlier proposal, which may get lapsed. Minister of state for home Deepak Kesarkar said that the government may consider a fresh ban proposal only after completion of investigations into the Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare murder cases and if links between the accused and Sanatan Sanstha are established.
The Opposition has been demanding a ban on the right-wing organisation as it was suspected that the accused in the Dabholkar and Pansare murders have alleged links with workers of Sanatan Sanstha, which the latter has categorically denied. The erstwhile Congress-NCP led state government had sent a ban proposal to the then-Union government in 2013. The Centre raised few queries, which were addressed by the present state government in 2014 and 2016. Only the Union government wields the power to ban the organisation and not the state government, Mr Kesarkar said.
According to a senior officer, it is binding on the state government to send the information of the offences registered under the Prevention of Unlawful Activities Act to the Union government in 24 hours. The home department has been sending information regularly to the Union government, but it has not send any fresh proposal to the Union government in 2018 as per information leaked in the investigation into the Dabholkar and Pansare case. Banning any organisation is a quasi-judicial process and the organisation has the right to defend itself before the judicial authority as per the principles of natural justice. It may not be possible to ban the organisation based on the reasons mentioned in 2013, because Union government had not pursued the matter and the grounds given for banning Sanatan five years earlier may not be valid in 2018. Sanatan can cite the ground of delay in its defence, said a senior officer of home department.