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Toll in MP Naxalite attack rises to 23

Rahul Singh in Bhopal

With the death of one more policeman, the toll in the Naxalite attack at Narayanpur village in Bastar district has risen to 23.

This was the second major attack by Naxalites in Madhya Pradesh since 1991 when 18 persons were killed in Dantewada district.

The total number of police personnel killed in Naxalite violence since then has shot up to 87.

The tribal-dominated Bastar district seems to have become an impregnable fortress of the Naxalites. Though their activities started in the late 1980s, the People War Group now almost runs a parallel government in the interiors of the district, which has a difficult hilly terrain and is endowed with a thick forest cover.

Holding elections there has become a difficult job with Naxalite guerrillas routinely blowing up police wagons with landmines.

Scores of police personnel have been killed in each election that Madhya Pradesh had conducted in the last 15 years. There are villages that government officers dare not enter.

Not that the police have not tried their best to check the terror. But somehow, the killing of Naxalites and the alleged repression of innocent villagers have only aggravated the problem.

The latest proof of the Naxalites' growing influence was the murder of a minister of the Digvijay Singh government. To date, the state government has failed to nab the culprits. In December last year, Transport Minister Likhiram Kawre was brutally done to death by suspected Naxalites at his residence.

The unabated activities of the Naxalites in Bastar and other districts have also reopened the debate on banning the PWG. Chief Minister Digvijay Singh had argued against it in the past on the grounds that banning the organisation in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh has had little impact.

No wonder the Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded Singh's head. The main opposition party has demanded that the chief minister resign on moral grounds, because the Naxalite attacks have clearly exposed the deterioration in the state's law and order. Leader of the Opposition Gauri Shankar Shejwar said the state government had failed to curb not only Naxalite activities but also terrorist crimes. The law-and-order machinery has proved to be totally inefficient and such violence has proved that the Digvijay Singh government has failed to govern.

EARLIER REPORT:
22 policemen killed in Madhya Pradesh blast

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