Stop violence for 72 hours and well talk: PC to Naxals

Chidambaram also pointed out that while the past 14 months had been very difficult for India,there were some silver linings as both in J&K and Northeast violence was at its lowest level. However,he added that things had become worse as far as Naxals were concerned. 

As long as we didnt engage them,they were happy,they kept on expanding their base. They will continue to expand unless we challenge them, the minister said adding that the Naxals would try every trick in their bag to gain support,conduct carnage as in Bihar and Bengal,seduce the media,unleash false charges and pull all strings to activate frontal organisation and unsuspecting NGOs to widen their circle.

The minister also said intellectual and material support extended by some people to the Naxals did make things difficult and confused the public. The most difficult aspect,however,was finding well equipped and well-trained state police forces to take on the Naxals a very special kind of adversary.

Chidambaram,however,clarified that while the CPI (Maoist) was a banned organisation under the UAPA,the government was willing to hold talks provided such groups give up violence. On the issue of police excesses in Naxal-dominated states,the lack of developmental work and social infrastructure,the minister said these issues were entirely in the domain of the respective state governments. The Centre,he said,was only helping these states reclaim areas that were controlled by the Naxals and where civil administration had been done away with.

Speaking about the kidnapped BDO in Jharkhand,whose release came later in the day,the Home Minister said it was the discretion of the state government to free some people to secure the officers release.

There is no one size fits all approach. Its for the Jharkhand government to decide to release some low level women Maoist cadres or presumably innocent people,that is the judgement the state government makes. I cannot be second-guessing every state-level decision. I hope the BDO will be released, Chidambaram said.

The Bengal government also released some people earlier by granting them bail,so be it. These are issues best left to the state government, he added.

On the upcoming Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan,Chidambaram said pending issues related to the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai would be on the agenda of the talks scheduled for February 25.

On the Pune blast,the minister said,Terror never went away so how can it come back…what happened in Pune was that we did not have the luck or the clue that this would happen at a nondescript bakery…it was not an intelligence failure…between two hard targets someone slipped through the cracks and targeted a soft target,so people must be very vigilant now and we have started a campaign on this issue.