Ban on Popular Front of India

Ban on Popular Front of India
Source: Indian Express
GS II: National Security and Challenges

What is discussed under Ban on Popular Front of India?

For close connections to terror funding, the central government banned the Popular Front of India (PFI) and its fronts for five years.
The judgement was made under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), following a week in which security authorities launched nationwide raids and detained scores of persons associated with PFI in different states.

The PFI was founded in 2006.
It identifies itself as a non-governmental social organisation whose declared goal is to work for the poor and disadvantaged people of the nation and to combat injustice and exploitation.
The PFI was formed after the National Development Front (NDF), a contentious organisation founded in Kerala a few years after the Babri mosque was destroyed in 1992, united with two other southern organisations.
Over the next few years, it grew in size as new organisations from around India amalgamated with it.
Currently, the PFI, which has a major presence in Kerala and Karnataka, is active in more than 20 Indian states and claims to have hundreds of thousands of cadre members.

The government has charged the organisation and its members with:
Photo by Fabien Maurin on Unsplash
- Crimes against the state
- Creating enmity amongst different sections of society
- Taking attempts to destabilise India
The PFI initially came to public attention in 2010 following an attack on a college lecturer in Kerala.
- Although the PFI distanced itself from the suspects, a court convicted several of its members for the attack.
Members of the organisation were also linked to the beheading of a Hindu man in the western state of Rajasthan.
Police in the eastern state of Bihar reported a few months ago that the organisation had allegedly disseminated a manifesto calling for India to become an Islamic republic.
In 2018, PFI supporters were accused of stabbing to death a leader of the left-wing Students Federation of India (SFI) in the Kerala coastal city of Ernakulam.

The government claims it has banned the PFI and its affiliate groups for allegedly engaging in illegal acts that are harmful to the country’s integrity, sovereignty, and security.
It has noted the group’s suspected ties to banned Islamist organisations such as:
- Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi)
- Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)
- Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)

Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act

The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is an Indian law that aims to prohibit illegal activity associations in India.
Its principal goal was to provide authorities for dealing with acts aimed at undermining India’s integrity and sovereignty.
The most recent change to the legislation, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2019 (UAPA 2019), allows the Union Government to label individuals as terrorists without following due process.
The UAPA is also referred to as the Anti-Terror Law.

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