Thousands in Agra sign anti-terror pledge

Agra, Dec 14 (IANS) Thousands of people in Agra Sunday signed a charter demanding a 'clear-cut action programme' to combat terrorism in the wake of the Mumbai carnage.

Representatives of business chambers, social organisations, and artists as also religious heads joined the campaign.

The organisers, Citizens of Agra Forum, said they would collect pledges signed by at least 100,000 people and send these to the president next month.

'We will get signatures from at least 100,000 citizens of Agra and send these to the president with our demand for a clear-cut action programme to contain terrorism, internal and external,' Harvijay Bahia, convener of the programme, told IANS.

'We feel people at the grassroots have to be mobilised and sensitised to be vigilant and weed out undesirable elements from our midst,' he said.

Ashok Jain, chief organiser of the month-long campaign, said: 'Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, has already received several threats and needs to be extra cautious. That is why we have launched the programme to involve all sections of society.'