Sanatan Sanstha not invited to top VHP event

PANAJI - Sanatan Sanstha, a right-wing Hindu outfit whose members were accused of carrying out the Diwali-eve blast in Goa last year, is excluded from the reception committee list of an international conclave organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) here next month.

Responding to queries from the media on the exclusion of the Sanatan Sanstha from the list of Hindu organisations, VHP India vice president Ashok Chowgule said the media should not pick on nitty-gritty of organisational issues.

“We have tried to include everybody in it. We have tried to contact nearly all organisations and are in the process of contacting some others,” Chowgule said, refusing to specifically state whether the Sanatan Sanstha had been invited or excluded from the event.

Nearly a dozen members of the Sanatan Sanstha have been accused of carrying out an explosion on Diwali-eve last year in which two members of the outfit were killed while accidentally trying to ferry the improvised explosive device (IED) to a crowded place.

Chowgule said top leaders of the VHP, including VHP international president Ashok Singhal and international working president Shreenivas Vedamanti, would be discussing issues relating to violence and saffron terror, the Jammu and Kashmir issue, and the construction of the Ramjanmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya at the Goa meeting which will be held at the temple complex in Ramnathi, 35 km from here.

Incidentally, the temple complex is a few hundred metres from the Sanatan Sanstha headquarters located in the same village.

The reception committee is headed by former Goa chief minister Shashikala Kakodkar and more than 40 Hindu organisations are part of it.