After the arrests and interrogation of prominent Popular Front of India (PFI) leaders, now NIA turns to the leaders of Social Democratic Front of India (SDPI). As per report on February 6, 2022, SDPI general secretary Roy Arakkal has been interrogated. State general secretary Ajmal Ismail was already interrogated earlier. Roy Arakkal is interrogated in connection with the details gathered during the interrogation of a SDPI state secretariat member. NIA has served notices to more SDPI leaders for interrotation.
The major concern for NIA is the shady financial transactions of SDPI and of the outlawed PFI. Therefore, the current interrogation process is very much crucial. Now, the NIA’s radar is on PFI men, who ‘migrated’ to SDPI recently. Since PFI was banned by the union government, lot of PFI workers have joined SDPI. It is because, SDPI is a political party under the Representation of People Act hence union government can only ban the outfit after getting the concurrence of the Central Election Commission (CEC).
BJP Kerala State president K. Surendran said that, after the ban, PFI men have joined Muslim Youth League, youth wing of Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), youth wing of CPM.
No doubt, ruling CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and Opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) are engaged in neck-to-neck competition to grab the minority vote bank at the ‘cost of anything’. Obviously IUML is the second largest partner of UDF and always powerful enough to prevail upon the Congress in the matters concerning ‘these sorts of matters’.
