Indian Anti-Terror Front felicitates President

The All India Anti-Terrorist Front (AIATF), a leading organization opposed to terrorism in all its forms has felicitated President Mahinda Rajapaksa for “launching a nationwide peace initiative and checking the LTTE onslaught”.

The Memorandum of Felicitation was handed over to the Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi yesterday by Maninderjit Singh Bitta, Chairman of the AIATF, which was set up in the late 1980s to counter terrorism that wrecked the Indian State of Punjab at the time. It’s founder and present Chairman Bitta was a Cabinet Minister in the Punjab Government in 1993, and later under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao was Head of the All India Youth Congress. He has narrowly escaped several assassination attempts, and was injured in attacks by terrorists during the campaign for a separate Sikh State.

The AIATF is widely recognized in India for the useful work it does in carrying out mass action to create an abhorrence of all kinds of violence, while also affording practical assistance to the victims of terrorism.

The Memorandum of Felicitation also states: “Your Excellency and your team of expert advisers on internal security has set a unique precedent for other countries ailing for a long time by similar tumultuous internal disturbances and the menace of terrorism.”