TMC firm in opposing joint operations

Reiterating her opposition to the ongoing joint operation against the Naxalites (CPI Maoist) at Lalgarh, in Paschim Medinipur, Mamata Banerjee said today that her party would continue to oppose it. She has pointed out that the joint operation had not yielded the desired results, as killing of poor people in the junglemahal was continuing.

The fact that the Congress-led coalition government in the Centre, in which her party is an important ally, is the prime mover in the joint operation with the state government, has placed Mamata in a piquant situation.

In her effort to distance herself and her party from the Centre's decision to conduct the joint operation at Lalgarh and also from the Naxalites, Mamata criticised both. She made it clear that her party won't take any responsibility of the fall-out of the joint operation. Mamata is of the opinion that since the CPI(M) government is also a party to the violence in the region, any joint operation with the state government won't be beneficial.

In a veiled attack on the Union home minister, P Chidambaram, she observed that the home minister has expressed his desire to hold meetings with the state government on this issue.

"Though our party never interfered with the workings of the Union home ministry, we won't accept this," Mamata said. But she stopped short of elaborating the line of action her party would take in that region to counter it. She alleged that the Union home ministry has been misled by the CPI(M) and because of this the joint operation, which started in last September, failed to yield any positive result. She claimed that the CPI(M) has inculcated the culture of violence in junglemahal.

Taking advantage of the joint operation, armed CPI(M) cadres have entered into the area and unleashed violence on the poor tribal people. "Now, the bloody war is going on there between the 'haves' and 'have not's, "she said.

While criticising the Naxalites and their front organisation, People's Committee against Police Atrocities which spearheaded the tribal movement in and around Lalgarh, Mamata made it clear that she had never been supportive of the politics of individual killings, which in the last one year has claimed at least 900 lives in the state, according to the statistics provided by the chief minister in the assembly. Of those killed, a sizeable number were lost in Lalgarh and its adjacent areas.

Admitting that a large number of them were CPI(M) supporters, Mamata said, "All such killings are condemnable." But she is not ready to blame the Naxalites alone, the CPI(M) should also share responsibility for that. She said mindless killings had claimed lives of CPI(M) workers, TMC activists and members of Jharkhand Party and other political activists in that area.