The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has sent an alert to the home department in Uttar Pradesh, warning of a major communal flare up during the coming festive season.
Major festivals, such as Navaratri, Durga Puja, Dasshera and Bakrid, will be held in the month of October and the IB input claims that efforts may be made to incite communal tension in the state.
IB sources confirmed on Tuesday that an alert had been sent to the state government. As many as eight incidents of communal clashes have taken place in different parts of UP since the Samajwadi Party came to power in March 2012.
Local disputes have led to communal violence twice, each in Bareilly and Pratapgarh, while Mathura witnessed a major communal clash in June this year.
Protests over alleged atrocities on Muslims in Assam and Burma took on a communal colour in Lucknow and Allahabad and statues of Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavir were desecrated by protesters.
The latest communal clash was witnessed in Masuri in Ghaziabad last week in which six persons were killed and 28 injured when the police opened fire to control an irate mob that torched a police station. Violence was sparked off after the Quran, with its pages splashed with abusive graffiti, was discovered from a place.
In all the districts where communal violence took place in the past few months, the situation has not yet returned to normal and undercurrents of tension between the two communities are very much palpable. “It needs just a spark to ignite the flames of violence in these districts because the government lacks the political will to resolve the situation. No efforts were made by political leaders to interact with members of warring communities and bring them to the negotiating table,” said a senior police official who was removed from one of the violence-ridden districts a few weeks ago.