Going by the scale of violence which was witnessed in the communally sensitive areas of the city, it appears that whatever happened on Thursday and thereafter, was not spontaneous, rather it looked like a well orchestrated plan on the part of those elements who are envious to the peace of this culturally homogenous city. It appeared to be a culmination of simmering tension the seemed to have build up in the city during the course of period.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the city has become a safe hide-out of anti-national elements. The arrest of a large number of hardcore SIMI activists including its kingpin Safdar Nagori from Indore some months back, is a pointer to this fact.

Arrest of these anti-national communal activists has revealed as to what extent Indore, which is also known as the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh, had been playing host to these extremist and anti-social elements and this could not have been possible without local support. Surprisingly, majority of the city people did not have any grain of thought that they were sitting on a powder-keg which have could battered peace of this city into pieces, long back.

Though our intelligence agencies and the police administration were in the know of the SIMI's heavy presence in the region, they took a belated action against them only recently which finally revealed the enormity of the problem. The point is whether the communal flare-up in the city, has any link with the arrest of SIMI activists and those who provided support base to these elements, have any hand in the recent spate of violence, are some of the apprehensions which would come to the fore only after a judicial probe into the matter.

These things apart, the district administration and for that matter the state government cannot escape blames for the unfortunate incidents which plunged Indore into a `communal turmoil'. The state government is responsible to an extent that lied in its recent spate of bureaucratic shake-up wherein a large number of promotee IAS and IPS officers were awarded with plum postings.

While effecting transfer of IAS and IPS officers in a city like Indore, the state government should essentially looked into the career profile of these officials to ascertain their administrative acumen - whether they would be able to administer a city like Indore, which is not only the fastest growing city in the central India but also is an economic driver of Madhya Pradesh as the lions share of revenue in Madhya Pradesh, comes from Indore.

Holding the Bharatiya Janata Party responsible for the incident, would also be unfair. Putting blame on the ruling party for deliberately `engineering' the communal flare-up to derive electoral mileage in the coming assembly elections, will be unjust as polls cannot be won by whipping up communal passion. Electorates have become clever and they cannot be befooled by such antics.

Krishna K Jha