Samajwadi Party national president Mulayam Singh Yadav had earlier said that if the programme for reconversion in the name of ‘Ghar wapsi’ (home coming) was not stopped, then it would lead to communal divide and could instigate further tension and riots in the state.

Realising the threat to communal peace in the state, Akhilesh Yadav government acted tough on the organisers and arrested office-bearers of the RSS outfits who had announced conversion programmes in various pars of state.

It would be worth mentioning here that RSS-VHP organisations had announced that mass conversions would be held in Aligarh on December 25 in which, besides Muslims, even Christian families would be reconverted to Hindu religion.

Various organisations of the Sangh Parivar had announced that similar programmes in eastern UP also, where controversial BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Mahant Adityanath, was to be chief guest.

It may be mentioned here that Mahant Adityanath heads Hindu Yuwa Vahini and is considered to be face of aggressive hindutva and command tremendous influence in eastern UP.

Various names had been given for holding recoversion programmes: one such is ‘beti bachao, bahu lao’, which provoked the sentiments of lakhs of peoples in the state.

There were inputs from the intelligence department that the recoversion programmes would have led to largescale communal tension as Muslims and Christian organsations were also preparing counter programmes, which would have led to confrontation in the society.

Sensing the tough mood of Akhilesh Yadav government, BJP too has distanced itself from the conversion programmes.

BJP state president Luxmikant Bajpai said that his party had nothing to with conversion programmes but it wanted strong conversion laws in the country.

Political analyst Dr Ramesh Dixit said that RSS-VHP-BJP had deliberately come out with the programme of conversion to instigate communal divide in the state to polarise Hindu for achieving mission 2017 to grab power in the state.

Dixit further said that BJP had been involved in communal tension in eastern UP which resulted in riots in several places and party reaped the benefit in Lok Sabha polls.

Again during recently held by-elections, BJP-RSS-VHP came out with sensitive issue of ‘love jihad’ and Hindutva face of party Mahant Adityanath was made in-charge of election campaign, Dr Dixit added.

Now once again RSS-VHP-BJP have come out with the conversions plan to mobilise Hindu voters by instigating and provoking the Hindus to bring BJP to power in the state.

Another political activist Surendra Rajput said these programmes are result of three-day deliberations of think tank of RSS in Lucknow recently where RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat set the target of over 250 seats for BJP in the state.

UP police arrested Nand Kishore Valmiki convenor of Dharm Jagran Samiti in Agra who was instrumental in conversion of 20 poor Muslims families in Agra recently.

This incident was named as ghar wapsi (home coming) as they had been converted to Muslim religion 30 years back.

The investigation reveals that these converts told that they were lured by the members of Dhram Jagran Samiti for procuring ration cards and other benefits. (IPA Service)