CALCUTTA, May 22: Nearly 50,000 followers of the Naxalbari Movement from Bihar, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh are expected to come together on Friday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the movement at Shahid Minar in Calcutta.

The highlight of the gathering will be the joining of hands of Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) of Bihar, People's War Group (PWG) of Andhra Pradesh and the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML) of West Bengal.

It will also try to counteract the efforts of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Government in West Bengal which has created ``an illusion'' of social justice, according to PWG ex-member and revolutionary poet, Gaddar.

Gaddar told reporters that the Naxalites continue to believe in the idea of armed struggle against feudalism in society despite intense repression meted out by the Andhra Pradesh state police.

Gaddar was shot and seriously wounded in early April just outside his residence by people who he claimed were policemen in plain clothes. He survived the injury from four bullets to tell the tale.

Today, six weeks after the incident, he seemed fully recovered and ready to struggle afresh against what he called the repressive measures of the state government.

Gaddar, whose original name is Vittal Rao, said he strongly objected to the Andhra Pradesh police as well as Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) who apparently shot alleged activists in fake encounters but refused to hand over their bodies to the next of kin.

``What right does the police have to claim the bodies when they are not willing to hand them over to friends and relatives?'' asked Gaddar. He also recalled the mid-1980s when relatives of people, shot dead by the police, would disown their kith and kin for fear of state repression.

PWG ideologue Var Vara Rao claimed that the Naxalbari Movement had emerged as ``an alternative to parliamentary politics'' and added that the Naxals would firmly pursue the politics of armed struggle and boycott of elections in several states of India.Rao also admitted that the movement had fewer followers today in West Bengal than in Andhra Pradesh, though the birth of the movement in 1967 had taken place in West Bengal. For this, he blamed the CPM Government in the State, which he said had created an impression that it stood for the people. But recent actions of the CPM Government in promoting the interests of capitalism had opened the eyes of the common people, he said.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.