PM to hold all-party meet on Maoists

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will hold an all-party meet Monday to finetune the government's strategy to deal with Maoists, official sources said Sunday.

The meeting comes in the wake of last month's attack by Maoists on a Congress convoy in Chhattisgarh which wiped out the party's leadership in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state.

Addressing the chief ministers' meet on internal security Friday, the prime minister had said the government's two-pronged anti-Maoist strategy of sustained operations and addressing development issues needed to be strengthened.

After a meeting of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coordination committee June 5, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath had said the Chhattisgarh incident was "an attack on the democratic system" and that there was a need to "engage all parties".

The May 25 Maoist attack killed 28 people including former Congress state unit chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son Dinesh, party leader Mahendra Karma and former legislator Uday Mudliyar.

The injured included former union minister Vidya Charan Shukla. The National Investigation Agency is probing the massacre.