Bhubaneswar: Orissa’s senior government officiacls have said that mobile phones played a big role in flaring up communal riots in Orissa'''s Kandhamal district a year ago while religious conversion was one of the major reasons of disharmony among the people living peacefully for generations.

"I will like to blame use of new technology like mobile phones for flaring up the riots in Kandhamal", Orissa's Director General of Police, Manmohan Praharaj, said while speaking at a national seminar on the "Role of Police in promotion of communal harmony and national integration" here yesterday.

Admitting that the state police faced a lot of difficulty in tackling the communal situation in Kandhamal that broke out in the aftermath of the killing of VHP leader Laxmanananda Saraswati, the DGP said mischief mongers had easy access to mobile phones to engineer and organise riots across the communally sensitive district.

"While controlling riots earlier was comparatively easy for police, it had become difficult now because of the advent of new technology", Praharaj said adding that security personnel had to act in an impartial manner in order to bring back normalcy in the affected areas.

Madhusudan Padhi, Special Administrator for Kandhamal, however, said that religious conversion was a major factor behind the disturbances.

"When we talk of communal harmony, one must see the reasons behind disharmony", Padhi pointed out adding that the nature of communal violence varied from place to place.

The reasons behind riots in