The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Come back to negotiating table, APCC chief tells naxals

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 19, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Come back to negotiating table, APCC chief tells naxals

By Our Special Correspondent

TIRUPATI, JAN. 18. The APCC president, K. Keshava Rao, has taken strong exception to the Opposition criticism that the Congress took the support of naxalites to win the recent elections and now is trying to ditch them. The APCC chief, on a maiden visit to the temple city, was addressing a party rally taken out in support of the YSR Government's `Jala yagnam' conceived to complete pending irrigation projects with an outlay of Rs.46,000 in the next five years. Admitting indirectly that both sides could have observed some more restraint and avoided the killing of innocents, he made a renewed bid to invite naxalite leaders back to the negotiating table by keeping the arms issue aside. "You, be a partner in our joint effort to wipe off the tears of the underprivileged, give your helping hand in cutting down the redtape in implementing all your demands, join the main stream and even contest the elections with your ideologies and rule the State.

But it is not fair to kill the innocent. Whosoever did it, it is wrong," he said and appealed to Maoists to come back for talks.

Dig at TDP

The APCC chief strongly assailed the TDP for trying to create legal hurdles to the massive irrigation projects taken up by the Congress Government.

It was foolish to say that the Government should wait till it secured all the clearances for the projects and that it should not initiate the `tendering process' till all agencies cleared the projects.

The APCC president, while asserting that the party would not backtrack on the free power policy, however, sought to put it across that it was only considering the opposition from certain sections asking whether the Government should give free power even to such farmers who were Income Tax assessees.

The TDP president, N. Chandrababu Naidu, came in for severe criticism at the meeting with all MLAs, the Tirupati MP and all the senior party functionaries that spoke at the rally taking pot-shots at him.

CPI (M) appeal

Meanwhile, the CPI (M) squarely blamed the State Government and the naxalites for the stalemate. The party urged both the sides not to undo the good work done during the truce period.

Addressing a media conference here on Tuesday, the party's floor leader, Nomula Narasimhaiah, recalled his party's view expressed time and again that the Government lacked commitment in taking the talks to its logical end. He also blamed the Government of lacking clarity on the issues to be covered, pointing to the "non-serious attitude'' exhibited during the first round of talks.

He also opined that senior politicians and journalists should have been involved in the talks, making a demand that the Government make public the details of the talks.

On the arms issue, which triggered the conflict between the two parties, the CPI (M) leader sought to know why the Government was insisting that the naxalites lay down their arms now, after allowing it during the first round of talks.

`Land policy flawed'

Mr. Narasimhaiah also squarely blamed the Government's "flawed strategy'' in the land distribution programme scheduled for January 26. He wondered how the process would take off when the landholdings were yet to be identified.

He cited the case of Chittoor district, where six lakh acres was proposed to be distributed, while the Government possessed only four lakh acres of cultivable land.

On the issue of Kalki Bhagavan Trust buying 3,000 acres of land from dalits and freedom fighters in Varadaiahpalem mandal of the district, he demanded the Government to intervene and stop exploitation of the poor.

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