The People's War Group has dealt repeated blows to the process over the past two weeks in that part of the country where no official writ would really appear to run despite decades of anti-extremist offensives. The PWG's latest victim in Telengana is P. Purushottam Rao, the TDP candidate in the Sirpur Assembly constituency of Adilabad district, shot dead in broad daylight. That three ``gunmen'' of his were killed with him is an eloquent fact.

Elections this time are not for the faint-hearted. This first-ever murder of a major party's poll candidate by the PWG has been preceded by its assaults on localleaders and cadres of other parties as well. Notable was the killing of former Assembly Speaker and Congress luminary D Sripada Rao in neighbouring Karimnagar, considered the strongest base of the ultras.

The PWG attempted an even more telling message through the assassination in the heart of Hyderabad of IPS officer Umesh Chandra. He paid for the popularity he gained by his anti-terrorist operations in Karimnagar.

The message was louder and clearer with the blow-up of a police station in Medak days later, as the bloodthirsty band proceeded to try and enforce its poll-boycott call with a new determination this time. The past understanding between the PWG and the political parties, which had reduced such calls to rituals, may have been undermined by the erosion of the extremists' strength and other factors. The more important point, however, is about the degree to which the deals between the parties and the PWG have undermined the position of the entire political spectrum professing to practise democraticpolitics.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has alleged collusion between the armed outfit and the Congress, pointing to a party spokesperson's call for a review of the ban on it and another's for treating the terror in Telengana as a ``social problem''. He may be right this time, but the TDP can hardly claim a consistently anti-PWG track record.

The ban has continued to be reviewed under his own rule, and extraneous considerations have again and again influenced the state government's attitude to the problem of extremism. N.T. Rama Rao set the trend: he started by calling them ``annalu'' (brothers), went on to wage a war on them, removing the ban on them and reimposing it according to the dictates of political expediency. His successors have followed a similar policy, while no section of the present opposition has shown a preference for a staunchly anti-extremist stance.

The PWG's bloody participation in the current elections must be enough to make them all sit up. Terrorism cannot claim aredeemingly Left label, especially of the kind that has made Telengana a byword for backwardness. The social problem of the region cannot be solved without tackling the law- and-order problem that the PWG is. It must be defeated, whoever wins or loses, in these elections.