The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : 62 political activists with `militant background' identified

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 22, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

62 political activists with `militant background' identified

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, JAN. 21. As many as 40 Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) members figure in a list of 62 political workers with `militant background' identified by the intelligence wing of the police.

Interestingly, all those in the list hail from Telangana and represent the TDP, the Congress, the CPI-ML (New Democracy), CPI the (M) and the BJP, apart from the TRS. They include an MLA of the TRS, nine Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency (ZPTC) members, three mandal presidents, nine MPTC members, 14 sarpanches and a municipal councillor. There are six women among them.

The MLA involved, Koppula Easwar, who represents Medaram constituency, was a `militant' of the Singareni Karmika Samakhya (SIKASA), the frontal organisation of the erstwhile People's War in the coal belt. He was arrested by the police following an encounter killing near his house in Godavarikhani a few years ago. He was charged with sheltering SIKASA militants who were killed in the shootout.

Cardiologist on list

Also in the list is a cardiologist, who was a TRS office-bearer until the dissolution of the executive body of the party before the general elections. He played a key role in the sensational escape of the PW patriarch, Kondapalli Seetaramaiah, from Osmania General Hospital here in the eighties.

The list mostly contains the names of former PW militants and sympathisers.

The presence of Dhanasari Anasuya alias Seethakka, who unsuccessfully contested the last Assembly elections on TDP ticket from Mulug in Warangal district, brings into sharp focus the strong political affiliations of women with militant background. She was a dalam commander of Janashakti naxalites in the Mulug and Narsampet areas. Boda Vijaya, a Congress ZPTC member of Chennaraopet in Warangal, was a former PW militant.

There are three former district secretaries, a mandal unit president and vice-president of the TRS in the list. The State secretary of the CPI-ML (New Democracy), Vippala Prabhakar, whose name also figures in the list, was an underground cadre of the Praja Pantha group of naxalites in Bheemgal.

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