FLIP SIDE - Sigh of relief

Yogesh Mishra

When Union Home Secretary GK Pillai, during his recent Chhattisgarh visit, ruled out the possibility of deploying army in the Maoist-hit areas of the state in spite of series of naxal violence in the past couple of months, the leaders from both the ruling BJP as well as Opposition Congress heaved a sigh of relief. Although, both parties genuinely want eradication of naxalism from the tribal belts but not through army route.

Contradiction surfaces at this juncture. The BJP’s national leadership wants army to deal naxals in Chhattisgarh, but this was made public only recently by Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj while interacting with media persons during her Raipur visit. Swaraj first replied to the query on naxalism (now terrorism) in an obscure manner, but when the media insisted, she said a big ‘yes’ for army on party’s behalf. However, before her announcement, she had transferred the question to the Chief Minister Raman Singh terming him appropriate person to answer. Singh’s reply was completely indecipherable. He looked in accordance with Swaraj pertaining to use of army as a last resort to solve naxal problem, but the inference of his broken statements clearly indicated that he wanted Centre to take final decision after trying all permutations and combinations. But why Singh is not overtly supporting army deployment? The reason is simple. He knows that the army operations in the naxal-infested areas would also claim several innocent lives as it happened in Punjab and that might dethrone his party in the next elections. Hence, he wants to adopt the development route to win the confidence and mandate of tribals and has reasserted his faith in existing paramilitary forces.

The state Congress was also apprehensive that if the army was to be pressed into service in the naxal belts, people would not give it opportunity in the next Vidhan Sabha elections. Therefore, the Congress leaders, too, had kept their fingers crossed until the Union Home Secretary finally proclaimed before the media that army was not required in the present scenario and that it would take at least 5-7 years to eradicate naxal problem completely.