Governor to tour Netai,Buddha to meet Chidambaram on Jan 19

On a day-long visit,the governor will first go to Lalgarh and then visit Jhalda in Purulia district where seven Forward Bloc supporters were butchered by suspected Maoists in December,2010.

Senior officials of the state government said that apparently Narayanan was doing a “balancing act” on his first visit to a politically-troubled region of the state. While he wanted to deliver a message to the ruling party by visiting Netai,his visit to Jhalda is believed to be aimed at underlining the fact that the Maoist violence there was equally condemnable.

At Netai village,the Governor will talk to the victims’ families and meet local administration and police officers.

Yesterday,the Governor called Chief Secretary Samar Ghosh,Home Secretary G D Gautama and DGP Naparajit Mukherjee to Raj Bhavan to get updates on Lalgarh.

The chief minister’s office today announced that he was going to Delhi on January 19. “The chief minister will have a meeting with Mr Chidambaram at 10 in the morning and in the afternoon he is likely to meet the Prime Minister. We have not yet got confirmation from the CMO. He will come back to Kolkata late in the evening for a cabinet meeting next morning,” Sailesh Mukherjee,the chief minister’s private secretary,today said.

Hearing concludes on Netai killings
The hearing on the Netai killings concluded on Friday,the High Court is expected to pass its order on Tuesday.

Arguing on the petition,Additional Solicitor General Farook M Razzak said since July 2010,Home Minister P Chidambaram had expressed his concern over the armed camps in the state in several letters to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

In his reply,Bhattacharjee agreed the situation was not happy. So armed camps were running in several places in those districts,said Razzak. He urged the court to give directions for dismantling of such camps by armed force,he said. Advocate General Bolai Roy said police stations of West Midnapore had been told to take steps against armed camps. The bench wanted to know the view of the government and petitioners if the court directs to dismantle the camps.