The Centre has been alerted about Pakistan’s ISI fresh efforts to bring the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi) and CPI (Maoist) fronts together in West Bengal to stroke Maoist unrest.
The indications come as a major concern for the home ministry which has applauded the initiatives taken by the Mamata Banerjee led West Bengal government for the “turnaround” in the Maoist violence. The MHA on Thursday asked Maoist affected states to set up unified command structures, under the chief minister, to tackle naxalite insurgency.
The West Bengal police and the Intelligence Bureau have alerted the MHA that SIMI remnants and CPI (Maoist) activists have come together on a single platform in 3-4 border districts of West Bengal , including Murshidabad, to raise human rights issues and stage protests to whip up public sentiment against the government.
They suspect the ISI’s hand behind the latest efforts to revive Maoist violence in the state.
The concern was flagged by the West Bengal DGP Naparajit Mukherjee at the high level meet chaired by home secretary R.K. Singh and attended by chief secretaries and DGPs of nine LWE states to review the situation.
The MHA’s ambitious Integrated Action Plan (IAP) on Thursday got a shot in the arm with all nine naxal affected states backing the scheme in its present form. Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and finance minister P. Chidambaram to intervene after the Planning Commission proposed to scrap the IAP in its present form. Mr Shinde, wrote, “As per feedback from the state governments, the implementation of the IAP is much better than the Backward Region Grant Fund (BGRF) scheme... The role of the IAP is important in arresting the growth of Left Wing Extremism.” On Thursday, the MHA also asked states to furnish views on the new Maoist hostage policy formulated by the MHA allowing swap deals through negotiations without giving into demands for release of hardcore naxals.
The states were asked to fill development deficits in the so-called liberated zones by formulating area specific development models, relaxation of norms for recruitment of tribals in police forces, revisiting of the land title deeds cancelled by the tribal affairs ministry, enhance efficiency of special forces like CoBRA , constituting SITs to investigate serious Naxal offences and monitoring of trial of proceedings of senior cadre of CPI (Maoist).