The Supreme Court’s latest order reinforcing the ban on SIMI is just the latest in a series of blows it has received over the years.

Reacting to a SIMI petition seeking to remove the ban, the SC has observed, “You continue to be a secessionist movement as you have not stopped your activities till now,’’ a bench comprising Justices S B Sinha and Markandey Katju observed.

This confirms the infirm nature of our response to terror. Just a renewal of ban instead of getting to the root of SIMI and crushing it beyond recovery.

That’ll not happen for the obvious reason manifested in the form of the Messiah of Terrorists, Mulayam Singh Yadav. Recall how the whole nation stood on one side, and Mullah-yam on the other in the wake of the 7/11 Mumbai blasts?

Even as the Students Islamic Movement of India appeared on the Mumbai police’s list of suspects responsible for Tuesday’s serial blasts, the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led Uttar Pradesh government gave the organisation a clean chit.

Earlier, on June 23, the chief minister’s secretariat shot off a letter to the state home department urging it to withdraw cases pending against more than a dozen SIMI activists facing trial for their alleged involvement in the 2001 Kanpur riots, ‘in the larger public interest.’ [...] He refuted some reports highlighting that the lethal RDX used in the Mumbai blasts was forwarded by a SIMI module in Kanpur.

Reports of SIMI’s links with Al Qaeeda are therefore patently false. Which makes me ask questions like: should a terrorist/secessionist organization be granted the right to appeal against a ban? If SIMI can contest in a court, can’t the PWG/Naxals/Maoists do the same? Where does the whole business of fair play–it is better to let nine guilty men free than to convict one innocent man–end?

SIMI’s petition is illuminating:

The petitioner had challenged the ban on the grounds that it was indicative of a violation of the fundamental rights.

Absolutely. In India we have thousands of fiery fundamental-rights supporters. Fundamental rights of terrorists, that is. I wrote about one such specimen yesterday. And several bloggers who relentlessly campaigned for a certain Afzal.

Put an end to all this. Instead, fall back on the Congress party’s smack-the-Court antics perfected over the decades: introduce a legislation to protect SIMI. That’ll kill two birds with one stone: the Taliban will vote for the Congress party in the 2009 elections.