Taken steps to ban outfits involved in anti-social activities: Karnataka Deputy CM Ashwath Narayan

The Karnataka government on Thursday said it has taken necessary steps to ban organisations involved in anti-social activities and has sent the required information to the Centre in this regard.

Deputy Chief Minister C N Ashwath Narayan told reporters in Mysuru that 'merciless action' would be taken against such outfits and they would also be banned. "To ban them we have sent justification to the central government and have taken necessary steps in this regard and we will continue to take necessary steps. Their roots have now spread. So systematically we will take legal action against them and thereby enforce control," he added.

Recently state Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai had said that steps had been initiated for legal action and banning organisations like Popular Front of India (PFI) which are allegedly involved in anti-social and terror-related activities in Karnataka.

The state government has directed police and authorities concerned to gather information on activities of such organisations so that the required inputs could be sent to the Centre seeking the ban, Bommai had said, as he made it clear that outfits involved in such activities and which keep changing their names were under the scanner.

The statements have come in the backdrop of the recent arrests of terror suspects from Karnataka and weeks after the Uttar Pradesh police sought a ban on the PFI.

Targeting the previous Congress government in the state, Ashwath Narayan said it was because of their encouragement that anti-social organisations had grown to such an extent that now consider themselves beyond the law. "The previous governments that allowed them to grow are responsible. Instead of reining them in, they withdrew cases against them, allowing and supporting them to grow, he added.